For most of us, the best start and end to a year is influenced by great music. For this, a music streaming platform must understand what users want to listen to truly. With only a handful of mainstream apps available, you need to be careful about what you choose as your preferred streaming service. This year, I made the switch to YouTube Music, a streaming service that was once considered a mere afterthought freebie of YouTube. It now means serious competition to the likes of Spotify and Apple Music.
Using multiple music streamers was certainly not on my 2024 bucket list but I’m glad it happened. Having extensively used YouTube Music, Spotify, and Apple Music, I see myself sticking with YouTube Music for the foreseeable future for a variety of reasons. Let me tell you why.
What I Like After Switching to YouTube Music
If you didn’t guess it already, I’ve had many positive experiences after my switch to YouTube Music. And, a lot of it has to do with the algorithm. But of course, a music streaming app is much more than that. So let’s also look at what sealed the deal for me.
The Algorithm Advantage and Recommendations
Personally, the primary aspect when choosing a music streaming service is hands-down the algorithm. It is what determines whether the app is worth sticking around longer. I’ve seen my friends and colleagues argue about how one platform’s algorithm is better than others. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned after using Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Music, it’s that you wouldn’t know unless you switch and try out the platforms yourself for a couple of weeks. I found YouTube Music’s algorithm works phenomenally well in my case based on my listening habits.
Starting with the music recommendations. The kind of songs YouTube Music recommends is extremely tied down to the type of genres you listen to, duh. But I also think that the algorithm is extremely contextual. It’s great at figuring out the listening patterns that make you stay for longer. It brings a mix of older songs that you usually listen to alongside similar music that matches the energy, pace, and overall vibe of the music that you’ve been listening to so far. This makes you give the track a shot and that’s how you will probably end up liking it. Very smart.
For example, I was super into Anime music when I was contemplating switching to YouTube Music in 2024. Naturally, one of my go-to moods of that time was vibey anime music like Zankyosanka by Aimer from Demon Slayer. YouTube Music was quick to realize the themes – Anime, an energetic vibe, and a female lead singer. And that’s how it suggested around 10 tracks that I ended up liking very much.
That is not to say that I did not find songs from my other (now) favorite artists. In the rock genre, I found artists like Eve and Kenshi Yonezu. The common theme with them is that they’re known for smashing different genres together. The depth of recommendations is expansive, and that’s how I came to like it better than other platforms.
Emotional Context is Important
On the other hand, I’ve found Spotify’s algorithm struggles to understand the current emotion. I confirmed this with my colleague Anshuman. He says, “The worst part is when I am listening to a somber song and in the mood to listen to something similar. But Spotify instead hits me with a loud hip-hop track”.
In 2024, YouTube Music reunited me with some of my favorite tracks. Speaking of which, I was an EDM head back in the day. KSHMR was one of my favorites on Spotify. So, I was completely taken aback when YouTube Music’s algorithm pulled up an old favorite of mine “Carry Me Home”. I have no idea on what basis and I’ve stopped listening to EDMs since I switched to YouTube Music.
I don’t remember searching for it on YouTube, ever. Another aspect of YT Music that Apple Music should learn is the ability to differentiate between covers and original tracks. Hence, 2024 was a year where I got in touch with my old favorites and discovered new music. This makes me glad I made the switch.
Separating Originals and Covers
Before I made the move, I was listening to Apple Music at the start of 2024 for better quality. But one of the things it constantly struggled with was differentiating between covers, mashups, and original music. As a result, it kept adding cover music to my suggestion queue. It’s not something I wanted to listen to. This would not be a big issue if I were at home because it’d be easy to skip. However, skipping when driving or doing an important task would feel like a chore.
What YouTube Music did better for me is that it now offers a different section for covers and remixes on the home page. It never recommends these titles except a few that I exclusively listen to. When it does suggest covers, I tend to skip quickly if I don’t like it. The algorithm pretty much never suggests random covers, until I try to listen to my favorite covers again.
Another excellent aspect of the home screen is that it suggests community playlists based on your library. This is a great way to find more music that you may like.
Switching to YouTube Music also led me to listen to the same songs multiple times. I’ve definitely found the algorithm to get a bit repetitive. But from what I’ve noticed, it’s because the service is trying to assess your mood and come up with better recommendations. If you do end up listening to a known track halfway, you will like the next few recommendations until it throws another oldie at you to tailor recommendations, or gets confused. However, until that happens, you’re usually done with your listening quota for the day.
UI Features that Enhance Listening Experience
I love Spotify’s UI and I think it’s still the best of the bunch. But this year, I felt that YouTube Music’s UI has matured over what it was in 2023. If you’re unsure about what you want to listen to, YouTube Music shows a few Quick Picks for you to get started. Whereas on Spotify, it always felt like a task venturing into playlists to start playing music.
The best part? A Speed Dial feature was added in October this year and I use it to listen to my favorite current songs. Surprisingly, I’ve mostly found the track I’ve wanted to listen to on the first page of Quick Picks.
YouTube Music’s overall interface, again, has definitely improved this year thanks to the changes to the Now Playing UI and the addition of features such as Hum to Search, Sleep Timer, Custom Thumbnails, and Collaborative Playlists. By far, one of my favorite things about the UI in 2024 is the Up Next and Related tabs for music discovery. You can customize the queue by easily rearranging items and, if the queue is about to end, looking at the upcoming suggested songs.
The Up Next tab contains a very clever set of filters based on the playlist you’re playing. For example, if you’re playing the Discover Playlist, you’ll see filters like Popular, Deepcuts, Like “artist”, Mashups, etc, which makes it easier to find songs that you may like. Similarly, the Related tab helps you find songs that you’re comparatively less likely to enjoy, alongside recommended community playlists and artists.
Overall, the efforts to make the UI better in 2024 were pretty evident and they did manage to improve it significantly. It is much more accessible and takes little to no time to get used to. The elements are within reach with a single hand, and the filters on the home page ensure you find the right music, in case the app gets Quick Picks wrong.
Sound Quality and Codecs
Before you take out your pitchforks, let me explain. After trying YouTube Music and Spotify, the difference in sound quality isn’t vast but YouTube Music’s 256 kbps 48KHz 774 OPUS bitrate definitely sounds better than Spotify’s 320 kbps Vorbis, and 256 kbps AAC. I wouldn’t be going into the technical jargon but I do think people will feel the difference in sound quality if they use slightly premium headphones.
I daily drive the Moondrop Chu 2’s on my phone and the Sennheiser HD560S on my PC, and although the web app plays at 256 Kbps M4a, it still manages to sound better than Spotify PC client at 320 Kbps. Of course, these are just my observations and your mileage may vary. Apple Music is pretty much unbeatable here with up to 24-bit Hi-Res Lossless playback support, but it’s good to see Google providing a better codec for music to sound better. These are the little things that mattered to me in 2024.
I’ve also noticed that Spotify normalizes volume quite a lot, which affects dynamic range by a fair bit, even though it technically shouldn’t. I’ve heard the same from my friends for it to be a coincidence.
There is an online debate as to whether YouTube Music actually normalizes volume and if it affects the dynamic range, and in my experience it does and the Stats for Nerds option proves it. I’ve had issues with music sounding tiny or too loud at times, and I think there needs to be an option to turn on or off Normalization that the developers could’ve added in 2024.
YouTube Music’s Deep Catalog
The YouTube Music library is MASSIVE and it probably grew in 2024. That’s thanks to years of video and audio material, even the most obscure ones being stored on YouTube. From mashups to fan covers, first takes, live concerts, and official tracks, there’s anything and everything on YouTube Music.
The platform lacks walls and all you need to get your music on the platform is to have an internet connection. Heck, you can upload your music directly from the YouTube Music web app.
The Value Proposition
The final reason was YouTube Music’s price when compared to other streaming platforms. I started off at $1.5 a month with YouTube Premium in the subcontinent which is quite affordable. Even after the recent price hike, I ended up paying a total of $23 in 2024 for both YouTube Premium and Music. The perks of YouTube Premium are excellent, and YouTube Music is pretty much a freebie.
On the other hand, Spotify Premium is also quite affordable in India, also costing around $2. However, the extensive library with better sound quality, and an algorithm that has so far worked wonders, make YouTube Music the most compelling option for me. So, even if YouTube Premium in the US starts at $13.99 monthly, I feel it still offers a better value for money than Spotify’s $11.99 per month Individual plan.
Things YouTube Music Can Do Better
YouTube Music is not the ultimate music streaming platform and there are a few issues with it. Here are the things I dislike about YouTube Music.
A Cleaner UI and Podcast Integration
When it comes to the UI, Spotify has set a bar that’s hard to match. Lately, I do feel like the app feels a bit crowded. I say that because all my recommended playlists feel like they’re dumped on the home page unnecessarily. The same goes for YouTube Music. It could definitely use some cleaning up for sure but it’s way less crowded than Spotify. I believe Google should sunset the Samples feature and introduce a Podcasts tab with all the podcasts in one place. Doing this will also remind users that podcasts exist on the app.
The Podcasts tab can house all the podcast suggestions just like music suggestions on the home screen. It can contain new episodes from the podcast channels you follow, a finish from where you left off section, and different podcast channel suggestions.
As for the explore tab, I’ve never visited it, but I can see a lot of people using it to check out new releases, and top charts, and find music based on moods and genres. The overall user interface would definitely make use of better UI elements, and the app would especially look great if Google decided to use some of its material shapes across the interface. For example, the album art could use a Material You makeover followed by the buttons and the seek bar adopting squiggly lines.
Another suggestion that I did a separate article on is Translation support for lyrics. As someone who listens to a lot of Japanese music and is learning the language, this could be extremely useful. The live lyrics providers that YT Music uses already have lyrics Translation API endpoints. It’s just a matter of tweaking the UI and serving data, and paying providers a bit extra for the endpoint.
The Need for a Desktop App
Although the YouTube Music web app does pretty much everything the mobile app can do, the one thing I missed the most after the switch from Spotify was a dedicated app for desktops. Google made a native Google Drive app for Windows recently, and I can’t see why it cannot do the same for YouTube Music.
2024 was also the year when I switched to Firefox from Chrome, and I’m not sure if it’s just me but YouTube Music’s web client doesn’t seem to play well on Firefox. Jitters, lags, and unresponsive pages were some of the issues I faced. Now, Firefox could as well be at fault here but overall, I ended up using Edge to use the app. Therefore, I feel Google needs to make a YouTube Music app.
Lack of Interoperability
By far one of my biggest gripes with YouTube Music has to be the lack of ecosystem features. I love Spotify Connect and how the web, Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, WearOS, and watchOS apps sync effortlessly. Especially WearOS and watchOS. I ended up using smartwatches a lot in 2024, and I found the lack of music sync in YouTube Music a bit disappointing.
While none of the services except Tidal have tried to replicate this, I hope YouTube Music does it sometime soon. In fact, a feature was added in 2024 where the mobile and web apps already sync queues and the current song (not live, though). So you can at least continue where you left off, similar to videos on YouTube Premium. Google did make some progress this year but there’s still a long way to go.
The Lossless Opportunity
This article isn’t complete without mentioning Lossless playback support. Apple Music sounds exceptional but the rest of the experience is pretty bad, at least that was the case in my experience. Although YouTube Music offers better sound quality via better codecs, there’s a difference in quality between lossless and lossy.
2024 is almost over but Spotify’s Hi-Fi tier is still reportedly “coming”. It has been 7 years since the initial rumors, and at this point, I want to forget Spotify ever said something about Lossless audio. Google has a strong opportunity to capture the market early with its own lossless tier. However, it is not something many firms are willing to invest effort in, as it remains a niche offering meant for audiophiles.
Will I Stick to YouTube Music in 2025?
Absolutely! My experience with the platform so far has been nothing but positive. While I do have a few gripes about the UI and some of the missing features, I’d say 2024 has been an extremely fruitful year for YouTube Music. It’s nearly perfect for me based on the kind of music I listen to.
And while I can’t vouch that you will have a similar experience, it’s 100% worth giving a try. If you do end up switching, I would recommend you spend at least a few weeks using the platform for the algorithm to get the gist what you like listening.
Do you plan to switch to YouTube Music? If you already have, how would you describe your experience compared to other streaming platforms like Spotify? Let us know in the comments below.
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