YouTube has taken another jab at Apple and finally debuted the music streaming app it announced last month. The app helps users find new music to enjoy by allowing them to select from pre-made stations or create their own based on their musical tastes.
The app will launch straight into a customized home page based on your previous YouTube viewing habits, allowing you to mostly skip the process of telling Google what music you like in order to get things started. Videos you’ve liked will be saved and used to further tune the playlists, and a setting on these stations will allow you to determine how much variety should be added to the artist lineup.
Much like YouTube Gaming, the live-streaming app the company published earlier this year, YouTube Music isn’t so much a new service as a new skin over the existing YouTube content. It basically provides a new, music-centric way to browse music videos already available on the YouTube website.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwj1qFPnhow]
Those videos may not always be official music videos released by big labels, however. The app can also pull up fan videos related to or based on a song of your choice, creating what YouTube calls “a nearly endless catalog” of music.
The app is free to use, but comes with a few expected caveats. You’ll hear ads when you listen to music and you won’t be able to continue listening if you put the app in the background.
Last month the company launched YouTube Red, which allows for offline and background playback as well as ad-free video streaming. That service can be combined with the YouTube Music app to get all the same benefits for your music library.
You can grab YouTube Music for free from the App Store right now. Users who download the app will get a free 14-day trial of YouTube Red.
Earlier this month Apple debuted its own music streaming app on Android.
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Oh, Google again tries to push Material Design to iOS. They should be learning from Apple how to follow UI guidelines.
Unfortunately, app is available only in American App Store. So I can’t one-star it right away for this horrible design. But to all fellow Americans – you know what to do.
To be fair, Apple’s modern design is just as bad.
Not as bad as the design of this website.
Hey Mike, not a bad as the design of this website, still wish you guys would do something about it.
Yes, we do know what to do. We’ll judge the app based on it’s merits. If we like it, we’ll use it. If we don’t, we wont. What we won’t do is act like petty sycophants. Cuz ‘Murica
Apple Music performs amazingly well for me. No need to leave the farm. But I will go the extra mile and one-star it like the Fandroids are doing to Apple’s apps. It’s only fair.
I’ll be a childish a-hole because they’re being childish a-holes. Sounds legit.
The biggest issue I see with this service is that you’re not really listening to music as much as you’re listening to a music video, which these days features mini movie-like dialog, sound effects and even stops in the song to advance the “plot” of the video.
It’s certainly not comparable in the sense that until the artist has produced a video you’re not able to listen to an entire album. Never mind that most of the videos are from Vevo that has their own app. If anything Vevo should be throwing some shade toward YouTube Music unless Vevo isn’t interested in people using their app.
Sounds like s**t. Commercials, looks ugly……naaaah, I think I stay with my Apple Music account.