8 ms·

I still don’t get how YouTube (premium + music) isn’t a clear winner here. Why use Spotify if you can get all that for the same price?

e40 2y ago
UI/UX? YT is the most hated UX of anything I ever use. It’s different in terrible ways on each platform, too.
- EduardoBautista 2y ago
  On desktop I use YouTube music because of how bad the Apple Music app is. On mobile, I use Apple Music.
  - 23B1 2y ago
    What about the app don't you like? I ask because I'm done with Spotify and looking for the next service.
    - nothercastle 2y ago
      Apple Music has a really bizarre interface for managing playlists. It’s so cumbersome and takes way too many clicks. Probably as a side effect of being mobile first
      - nunez 2y ago
        Can you describe how? I actually find playlist editing to be really easy on Apple Music/iTunes.
      - 23B1 2y ago
        Wow I just tried it out and it's quite awful, you're right. The way Spotify allows you to see what's in the 'radio' station and then add additional tracks to a playlist is great – there's almost no similar functionality in Apple music. Actually bonkers that discovery is this bad in Apple music
  - eek2121 2y ago
    The desktop app is the same as the mobile one, what issue are you seeing?
  - shepherdjerred 2y ago
    You might like https://cider.sh/ https://cider.sh/
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  YouTube music on iOS and Android is very similar to the other music apps. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-music/id1017492454 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-music/id1017492454 with a 4.8 on iOS, so people seem to like it. https://music.youtube.com/ https://music.youtube.com/ is similar to the web apps. If you're using the video YouTube for music, you're not on the right app. I have both Apple Music (via One Premium) and YouTube Music via YT Premium, and I lean on YT Music overwhelmingly. Its algorithmic playlists are just a universe better.
  - whycome 2y ago
    Similar but not great. That last 10% is 90% of the experience.
  - vorpalhex 2y ago
    Last I tried it, you couldn't even click through different songs in an album without it jumping to the now playing screen. No way to disable that behavior in settings. Absolute trash of a UI. Spotify has plenty of warts but it is at least functional. On top of that, account management, setup, building new playlists is just horrible. It feels like the person who wrote it doesn't listen to music. Literally anything is better than Youtube music. Given that Google music was actually pretty good back in the day it is hilarious how badly Google has screwed it up.
    - llm_nerd 2y ago
      I guess people have different needs out of their apps. I was a long time Spotify user. When they decided to give hundreds of millions to Joe Rogan, I switched to Apple Music. Then when I got YT Premium for the video benefits, I randomly tried YT Music and it has been my primary since. And I have zero complaints. I search for artists and albums and songs and play them. Often I start algorithmic "radio" playlists based upon one of those. It plays the music. I save things to my library. I add things to playlists. I listen to music and I think it's a great app. And again, 4.8 on the app store, so the people for whom it's a terrible app might be the exception.
      - 2y ago
- skrebbel 2y ago
  I switched from Spotify from YT Music solely for UX reasons. Spotify is a weird flimsy thing to me (or at least was, back when I rage-quit it). Things like, their Android app didn't even have a "play album" button. Random simple stuff just was made needlessly hard. Queueing was weird, it seemed to nudge you to shuffling / algorithmic playback, they had this weird podcast thing going on that was just in the way, and so on. YT Music on the other hand, has excellent UX in my opinion. This surprised me, given Google's generally mediocre UX design, but they really got a bunch of competent people on this one. All the basics work the way you'd expect (and that's not trivial to get right). Play, queue, play next. Play album, shuffle, it all just generally does what I expect it to do and I can mostly find the buttons I want easily. You can turn off autoplay. Gapless album playback is on by default. It.. just works! Also I find the algorithmic autoplay to be pretty great, found some great new artists that way. The fact that the catalog is bigger because it includes weird bootleg recordings and live sets and anything music-y ever uploaded to YouTube, is a nice bonus. But for me, the UX sells it.
  - Mindwipe 2y ago
    The YouTube Music UI fails at very basic things. Play a track that Google seems is "for children" and you are unable to navigate to another track or browse without it stopping playing, because the service inherited YT's clumsy COPPA compliance solution. The UI can't cope with long titles. It uses space badly. It doesn't surface content well (no Christmas playlist on the front page during December). It's a UI mess. I tried switching my family to it since we pay for YT Premium anyway and faced a total revolt.
  - nunez 2y ago
    I found Spotify to be very playlist-oriented. Not great for people who listen to albums straight through. Things like pushing albums to a queue were not possible on the platform (IIRC the best you could do is play albums "next").
    - prpl 2y ago
      you can add albums to the queue. Have been able to for a long time.
- soulofmischief 2y ago
  If the Spotify UI was the only way I could consume music, I would never listen to another song again. It's ugly, barely customizable, wastes space, wastes time, and it's flat-out user hostile, just like recent YouTube UI changes. Except unlike YouTube, I cannot reasonably modify the style and functionality to my liking, or easily use third-party clients. It seems to me the most ethical mode of consumption which doesn't compromise consumer integrity and freedom is to use YouTube, or pirate, and to make up for lost royalties by directly supporting creators and encouraging creators to cut out the middlemen.
- jMyles 2y ago
  Vanilla VLC still feels like the best user experience to me.
  - CasperH2O 2y ago
    Im still on Winamp, still got the keyboard keys in my muscle memory.
  - rpdillon 2y ago
    Agreed! Still my go-to across desktop and mobile.
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
  Spotify has such a terrible app, at least on iOS. If you download a song and have a weak cellular/WiFi connection the app prefers the connection over the downloaded song, so you just can't listen to music unless you turn on offline mode. Similarly, if you have a weak connection and go back a song that song isn't cached which is infuriating. This mostly happened when I was getting into my car which is barely in WiFi range but the connection wasn't stable enough to be usable, so I'd have to start driving before I could interact with Spotify. Anyway, I switched to Apple Music a year or two ago. Spotify is trying to lock users in with the social aspect (e.g. Spotify Wrapped) but it's just not worth it.
  - oarfish 2y ago
    Man, there's few things as infuriating as the Spotify app refusing to play a downloaded podcast unless i connect to the internet. can disconnect right after it starts playing, so it makes no sense.
- jimmaswell 2y ago
  I've been on a streak of days-long roadtrips using YouTube in my car for about a year and the experience has been great for me on the whole.
denkmoon 2y ago
The audio quality of most music on YTM is abysmal.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  ??? Studio provided digital masters will of course be identical across all of the services. Apple Music has the upper hand on the very high end with full lossless streaming, but that's irrelevant to almost everyone listening in a compromised situation -- like 100% of bluetooth headsets -- and YT Premium's 256Kbps AAC is extremely high quality.
  - Avamander 2y ago
    If it has been uploaded with that quality. It's not like YouTube is giving it's replacement tool to anyone regular to use, for better-quality uploads.
    - llm_nerd 2y ago
      You, along with many others, seem very confused about this. No one is talking about random people uploading their MP3s to YouTube the video service. YouTube Music is a separate service. The music is provided by music labels in exactly the same way it is provided to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and others. Music labels provide digital masters and the streaming service encodes as necessary for their users.
      - denkmoon 2y ago
        Yeah, YTM isn't a _completely_ separate service. It's just a different frontend to YouTube. If you search for one of those "official" music label uploaded songs on youtube, you'll get the exact same video ID as you get on YTM. Conversely, if there isn't an "official" copy uploaded, you'll get joe's random 128kbps triple-encoded upload.
      - anamexis 2y ago
        YouTube Music definitely has just standard YouTube videos uploaded by random people. It's one of the only reasons I use YouTube Music - listening to vinyl rips of things that were never released in other formats.
kevingadd 2y ago
YouTube Music is one of the worst pieces of software ever created. That's the only reason I use Spotify at all. YTM on Android crashes randomly, playback stops randomly, it forgets your playback position in podcasts randomly, sometimes it breaks itself so hard that you have to hard reboot your phone to fix it. It's incredible.
cactusplant7374 2y ago
One doesn't even need to pay for YouTube. Just install Brave browser.
Mond_ 2y ago
Habits and familiarity are pretty powerful forces.
solardev 2y ago
Spotify has awesome playlists, both from the community and curated by the company itself. YouTube is much worse at that, last time I checked. Mostly shitty spam, as with everything Google. I don't really listen to individual songs or albums, but look for "classic rock for workouts" or "relaxing instrumental for work" etc. Spotify is great for that.
- nothercastle 2y ago
  How do you find decent community curated playlists
  - solardev 2y ago
    I just search as normal and look in the playlists. Usually something in the top 2 or 3 results is a good one. I think they're ranked by number of saves or something? Not sure. The official ones labeled "Spotify" are also quite good.
jakkos 2y ago
I switched to YouTube Music from Spotify years ago, but have friends who refuse to switch, my understanding is: - The YTM UI just feels worse than Spotify - YTM has no official desktop app - Moving all your liked songs and playlists over is annoying - The whole shutting down Google Play Music just to release Youtube Music did a lot of damage to their "brand mindshare" - People think it just means watching music videos on YouTube - Everyone they know uses Spotify and they like seeing what their friends are listening to and it's easier to share links to songs within platform
- joemi 2y ago
  > - Moving all your liked songs and playlists over is annoying I've switched music streaming services a few times and this is always a pain, no matter which streaming service. I really really wish there were some universal export/import format that all these services shared to make switching easier (but I understand that might not be in their interest).
  - internet101010 2y ago
    A universal track id number combined with m3u?
- kid64 2y ago
  To convert links, try this: https://idonthavespotify.donado.co/ https://idonthavespotify.donado.co/
wesselbindt 2y ago
From my end the decision to not use the Google product comes from two places. Firstly, any money I send to Google is probably a net negative for the human race as a whole (though the same could probably be said for Spotify). Secondly (and much more importantly for me personally), YouTube is quite addictive, and having premium would enable me. If someone offered me a music streaming subscription with a bit of free crack cocaine on the side, I would not take it over someone offering me just the subscription, regardless of the price (up to a point)
- soulofmischief 2y ago
  As a counterpoint, YouTube is a vast chasm of highly educational and worthwhile media. There's no other space like it for long-form independent educators, and it's a creative space we need to protect by keeping it economically viable for YouTube. At least until comparable spaces (with sustainable audiences) exist.
  - Minor49er 2y ago
    There are plenty of better alternatives to YouTube for independent educational media. For example, Udemy, Skillshare, or Coursera which allow independent educators and don't rely on poor recommendation algorithms or incessant advertising (both from the platform and in sponsorships)
    - dylan604 2y ago
      Better alternative in some regards, maybe, but for discoverability, there is no bigger platform than YT. It's the Walmart of media consumption with a "you're going to make it up in volume" concepts
    - soulofmischief 2y ago
      I've sampled all of those services. None of those have comparable, sustainable mass audiences like YouTube. They also lack integration with my other consumption, which YouTube provides. And in general, the quality of independent educational content I find on YouTube is quite good and is often a product of YouTube culture itself, now that we are no longer in the first generation of YT creators, and I quite like the culture and its aesthetic. Udemy, Skillshare and Coursera have failed to create a product which attracts me, and the general population. Their focus on specific content and consumption habits is both a blessing and a curse, depending on who you ask.
brtkdotse 2y ago
Or Apples family offering. For ~€40 we get Apple Music, Apple TV+, 2 TB of iCloud and probably something more for the whole family.
SecretDreams 2y ago
YouTube music's biggest issue is that it's run by Google. The second biggest issue is that they kill their best apps every 5-10 years. YouTube music is only recently getting to Google music parity.. the app that they killed 5 years back and replaced with YT music. Also, they've ruined whatever they offered for podcast management when they killed google podcasts and tried to direct users to YT music -_-.
- pas 2y ago
  their podcast integration works. it's not amaaazing but no issues with it. the migration from Google Play Music was pretty uneventful for me. (i assume folks with huge uploaded libraries might not share this impression.)
tomrod 2y ago
Newpipe is great here too, as well as Freetube.
mightyham 2y ago
I would be more interested in YouTube music if it allowed users to play the audio of any video. Right now, a video has to be tagged by the creator as music for it to be made available on the app.
Stealthisbook 2y ago
YT Music is generally as good or better for casual listening. There's a potential deal breaking quirk in that some tracks are user uploads. You can find obscure stuff that's not easily available elsewhere, but I've found quite a few tracks that are low quality CD or vinyl rips, and concert bootlegs. If you build a playlist, it's not easy to weed out the trash.
Avamander 2y ago
YouTube doesn't let me add certain tracks to playlists because it has mistakenly labeled them as for kids. It's a stupid platform with way dumber limitations than Spotify.
matwood 2y ago
I never cared for Spotify, but I was an early Google Play Music user. Loved it. Then they forced me to YT music and I left for Apple. The YT UI was so bad. Now I have both AM and YTM because of bundling. AM stream quality is noticeably better. The YTM UI has gotten better over the years and I think the sheer size of YTM means there are tons of playlists which I like. My preference now would be to duplicate all the YTM user playlists to AM.
eek2121 2y ago
I use Apple because of the One plan. Not about to pay for anything else.
nunez 2y ago
I tried switching to it years ago after I was forced to migrate from Play Music (which was superior, IMO). I was _very_ turned off to YT Music matching songs in my library with random audio tracks from YT videos. Perhaps they no longer do this, but I went with Apple Music, which is what I've used since. And now I'm mad about Play Music shutting down again! (They, Amazon Music and iTunes/Apple Music had a true "music locker" service where you could upload songs from your library, no matter the source, and play them anywhere. iTunes/Apple Music is the only one left that does this, and even then, I'm not sure if the iTunes part works on Android.)
- int_19h 2y ago
  I'm not sure if the upload part works, but once it's uploaded it plays just fine.
- jakkos 2y ago
  > I was _very_ turned off to YT Music matching songs in my library with random audio tracks from YT videos. Perhaps they no longer do this I was also mega turned off by this... initially. At some point it stopped happening to me unintentionally and now it only really happens if I start playing from a YouTube video (which is actually quite help for some obscure songs/remixes). You can also turn off this functionality all together in the settings. > a true "music locker" service where you could upload songs from your library, no matter the source, and play them anywhere You can upload your own music and then stream it from any device on YouTube Music now
badgersnake 2y ago
For me a few reasons: * cost isn’t really a factor, a couple of quid either way ain’t gonna impact my life * what I’m interested in is the artists I rate getting paid. * Google are even more evil than Spotify.
drakonka 2y ago
I've been using YT Music for years and have all my playlists there, but am now considering switching to Spotify because _everyone_ I know sends me Spotify links. I then also feel bad sharing YT Music links when their entire ecosystem (car audio etc) is centered on Spotify, and YouTube is likely to play an ad if they're not a subscriber. Music sharing is kind of a big thing for me and it sucks that I'm now paying for a service I don't use just to share links with people >.<
- peheje 2y ago
  I hear you, just a bandaid but maybe checkout https://github.com/sjdonado/idonthavespotify https://github.com/sjdonado/idonthavespotify
  - drakonka 2y ago
    Oh that might do! I'll try it, thank you.
- wlesieutre 2y ago
  I’ve seen https://idonthavespotify.donado.co https://idonthavespotify.donado.co used for converting between services but when I tried it just now with some Apple Music links it identified albums wrong Sharing anyway in case YouTube music links work better
  - drakonka 2y ago
    I just tried this via that site as well as the Raycast extension and unfortunately keep getting server errors :(
aliher1911 2y ago
Spotify has albeit unofficial headless client for linux. None of other services I know does. It implements the same interface as smart speakers so can be controlled remotely by any gui client.
riazrizvi 2y ago
Yes! Spotify evidently does something. You can watch the Netflix show, that takes the original approach to explaining its success from the different angles of key people involved, to review one of the best approaches to answering this question for a company I’ve ever seen. In a world where musicians and listeners have all the other choices to connect still, IMO Spotify completely deserves its position. I detest the low effort complaints by ppl on Reddit saying their financial success is not deserved.
crazygringo 2y ago
Recommendations and playlists. Spotify isn't primarily about playing music for me, it's about finding new music to play. And Spotify's just where all of that is. The quality of the radio recommendations, the fact that there's always a playlist for every TV show soundtrack, that artists put together their own playlists, the quality and variety of playlists overall, and it's where cool people I know create and update their public playlists. None of the other services seem to come close in terms of that. I see links to Spotify playlists all over the internet. I don't think I've ever seen a link to a YouTube Music playlist?
- pas 2y ago
  YT Music recommender algo is pretty good. Easy to start a mix/radio from any track/video or playlist. There are public playlists, though I have no idea how well curated they are.
  - pohuing 2y ago
    It's also got a lot more niche music in it. I've switched because that. Practical everyone is on YouTube(willing or not), good luck finding that one self published song from 2009 uploaded from an abandoned account on Spotify though.
    - pas 2y ago
      Exactly. Recordings of live sets, strange/interesting post/doom/stoner metal albums, and - for better or worse - all the bootlegged stuff that Spotify doesn't have because legal disputes as user uploads.
- alberto_balsam 2y ago
  The Spotify app started suggesting me albums it labels as "Sponsored recommendations" a few months ago and it's really put me off. Now it's hard to trust how good it is at finding new music if Spotify is admitting to deliberately excluding most of its database and prefiltering down to its sponsors. You're right though, the rest of the things you mention do make it much tougher to decide on whether to switch and what to switch to.
_Algernon_ 2y ago
I consider Youtube negative value. It is a service explicitly designed to suck up as much as possible of my time / attention, and youtube doesn't change how their algorithm works just because you pay for it with real money. The watchtime maximizing works the exact same time as at the very least all the content produced withing the ecosystem still needs to be watchtime maximizing. Why would I ever pay for that? Edit-to-add: Not to mention that I have yet to forgive google for killing Play Music, a much superior service.
- beepbooptheory 2y ago
  People don't talk about this much, but much of Play Music lives on in Youtube Music. I am not sure if its because I was grandmothered in or something, but all my mp3s that are definitely not otherwise on YouTube still shockingly exist in my Youtube Music "Library".
  - Groxx 2y ago
    The storage and library is, yes, AFAICT. It's a "full" migration, everyone I know who used Play Music heavily has had no data-retention issues at all with YT Music. But the UX is so much worse, it's just mindblowing. Basically all of them left for something else eventually.
jillyboel 2y ago
Does youtube music have a desktop app yet? Or do they still expect me to hunt down one of my many tabs in one of my many browser windows any time I want to change a song? It's a ridiculous UX killer. I also don't want my music to stop when I restart my browser.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  > do they still expect me to hunt down one of my many tabs in one of my many browser windows any time I want to change a song Pin the tab? And chrome has a button to show all playing media in all tabs. You could also use a separate profile to solve both the finding and the browser-closing issues.
  - jillyboel 2y ago
    They could also just release a desktop app like a normal company
can16358p 2y ago
I'm not a Spotify user, I'm an Apple Music user, though if there wasn't Apple Music I'd use Spotify. The reason that I'd never use YT Music is that I never trust anything from Google: their interfaces are ugly, everything's user-unfriendly, and they have the habit of discontinuing a service at any time. Also it has the impression of not really being well-thought as a product: why name a music service after a video service? I know it's not the case but it always reminds me of those low quality music playlists where people collected low quality unofficial music videos back then in YT just for the music: simply not the right tool for the job.
- hawski 2y ago
  A lot of people listened to music from YouTube as their primary source besides an FM radio before Spotify was available as it is now. YouTube somewhat famously signed deals with music labels back in the day. Content ID was the controversial, but necessary compromise for the music to remain on YouTube. I am pretty sure a very significant percentage of music listeners globally listen mainly from YouTube, I did it and I also saw a lot of people doing it. It may seem stupid or counter productive, but it is easy and good enough. YT Music is a clear upgrade for those users. I think YT Music makes more sense than many of the Google initiatives and it will continue to make sense as long as they will have deals with music labels.
  - antihero 2y ago
    Those people generally didn’t care about audio quality, YouTube for me seems synonymous with unreliable bit rates and disorganisation.
    - jimmaswell 2y ago
      Quoting a reddit post: > Youtube's best audio is format 251: Opus with a variable bitrate target of 128k. Note that 128k Opus is approximately equal in quality to 320k mp3 (as in, it's generally considered transparent) I care a lot about audio quality and I use YT premium for music just about every day. You also get enhanced bitrate on some videos with premium.
rideontime 2y ago
Because the Youtube Music app is garbage. I already have Youtube premium and tried cancelling my Spotify for a few months, even transferred my saved playlists over, and it was a horrible enough experience that I'm back to paying for both.
- mcmcmc 2y ago
  That’s a little pot calling the kettle black. The Spotify app has been horrendous for years, ever since they started jamming in all the podcasts and garbage.
- redhale 2y ago
  100% this. I pay for YT Premium so I have YT Music for free, and I still choose to pay for Spotify because the YT Music app is that bad. Spotify's app is not perfect by any stretch, but comparatively it's amazing. I really miss the old Google Music service. But so goes almost any product run by Google for long enough -- slowly and inevitably into the ground (at least in terms of user experience, if not always in market share).
  - retrochameleon 2y ago
    Wow. YT Music must be extremely bad if Spotify is comparatively amazing. There are so many UX and general usability issues that drive me crazy and crazier still that they have made essentially 0 improvements to the app UX in the last 5 years. Other streaming services are unfortunately not an adequate replacement for myself, so I'm stuck with Spotify for now, unless I become determined to download my entire 8k+ library of songs for self-hosted options.
ClimaxGravely 2y ago
I have youtube premium and music. I've never tried spotify but I have to believe it's better than youtube music. It's hard to believe it could possibly be worse.
refulgentis 2y ago
Standard Google stuff. For context, I'm an ex-Googler, worked there 2016-2023 during this. For entertainment's sake, I'll list it as I experienced it, rather than just rotely saying "lol disorganized" - 2008-2015: Huge, absurd Apple fanboy. waiter => create startup => iOS dev. Sold it. - 2016: Apple rejects me b/c no degree, suggests calling back in a couple years. Google makes me an offer. I join Google. - October 2016: Wow Pixel looks cool...I work on Android watches...lets try Pixel. - November 2016: I've been missing out on so much with web services!!! Google is in the future while Apple is in the past!! Even just Google Play Music: Google has iTunes in the browser. Wow!!!! - 2017: Aw they're shutting down Google Play Music...but hey, I get it! I can see the internal musings and it makes sense, YouTube can commit more resources and has a great content catalog! - 2018: Wow this dogfood version is great! Lots missing from Google Play Music, seems like a thin shim over YouTube x "play audio only" button x music rights, but there's plenty of time to iterate before release! - 2019: Ehhh meh this is starting to feel weird, hasn't really evolved much. I do love the recommendation feed better! There's still some stuff to add back, I know they're working on adding your own files back, and they have that excellent Google Play Music/iTunes in the browser UI to be inspired by! - 2020: Goodbye Play Music, sunset, gone. Ehhhh nothing really changed with YouTube Music, but at least I'm saving money compared to Spotify - 2022: Podcasts is gonna get sunset and merged into YouTube Music? Makes sense, I guess. - 2023: Oh man, they sunset Podcasts and YouTube Music wasn't actually prepared for this, they had the absolute MVP for Podcasts...Oh man, look at public backlash. Man, BigCo management is hard...at the top, they only have bandwidth for Game of Thrones stuff of "We should take podcasts!!" but "delegate" the actual work and people are people, they do exactly what they need to with exactly the resources they have. I guess its cool they're publicly owning the backlash. - 2024: I am still using YouTube Music. I see your comment on HN, and realize I would have been happier on Spotify all along.
imbnwa 2y ago
Terrible app, variable quality since they clearly re-use music uploaded originally as video with a static background. Apple Music is king of streaming quality, however neither Apple Music nor YTM can beat Spotify's algorithm as far as the kind of music I listen to is concerned.
paxys 2y ago
I pay for YouTube Premium but still don't use the music app because of how bad it is. They are not a real competitor to Spotify.
- kid64 2y ago
  I don't pay attention to Spotify, are you saying YT Music is lacking features? If so, which one(s)?
yellowapple 2y ago
Why use either when you can download songs from normal YouTube (via yt-dlp) for free? I've indeed been asking myself that, as a current Spotify customer. The whole point of paying for a streaming service is the convenience of it combined with the monetary support of the artists on it. If Spotify is decreasingly convenient, and Spotify is decreasingly paying artists their fair share, then at some point I might as well just go back to torrenting whole discographies like it's 2005.

e40 2y ago

UI/UX? YT is the most hated UX of anything I ever use. It’s different in terrible ways on each platform, too.

EduardoBautista 2y ago
On desktop I use YouTube music because of how bad the Apple Music app is. On mobile, I use Apple Music.
- 23B1 2y ago
  What about the app don't you like? I ask because I'm done with Spotify and looking for the next service.
  - nothercastle 2y ago
    Apple Music has a really bizarre interface for managing playlists. It’s so cumbersome and takes way too many clicks. Probably as a side effect of being mobile first
    - nunez 2y ago
      Can you describe how? I actually find playlist editing to be really easy on Apple Music/iTunes.
    - 23B1 2y ago
      Wow I just tried it out and it's quite awful, you're right. The way Spotify allows you to see what's in the 'radio' station and then add additional tracks to a playlist is great – there's almost no similar functionality in Apple music. Actually bonkers that discovery is this bad in Apple music
- eek2121 2y ago
  The desktop app is the same as the mobile one, what issue are you seeing?
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
  You might like https://cider.sh/ https://cider.sh/
llm_nerd 2y ago
YouTube music on iOS and Android is very similar to the other music apps. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-music/id1017492454 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-music/id1017492454 with a 4.8 on iOS, so people seem to like it. https://music.youtube.com/ https://music.youtube.com/ is similar to the web apps. If you're using the video YouTube for music, you're not on the right app. I have both Apple Music (via One Premium) and YouTube Music via YT Premium, and I lean on YT Music overwhelmingly. Its algorithmic playlists are just a universe better.
- whycome 2y ago
  Similar but not great. That last 10% is 90% of the experience.
- vorpalhex 2y ago
  Last I tried it, you couldn't even click through different songs in an album without it jumping to the now playing screen. No way to disable that behavior in settings. Absolute trash of a UI. Spotify has plenty of warts but it is at least functional. On top of that, account management, setup, building new playlists is just horrible. It feels like the person who wrote it doesn't listen to music. Literally anything is better than Youtube music. Given that Google music was actually pretty good back in the day it is hilarious how badly Google has screwed it up.
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    I guess people have different needs out of their apps. I was a long time Spotify user. When they decided to give hundreds of millions to Joe Rogan, I switched to Apple Music. Then when I got YT Premium for the video benefits, I randomly tried YT Music and it has been my primary since. And I have zero complaints. I search for artists and albums and songs and play them. Often I start algorithmic "radio" playlists based upon one of those. It plays the music. I save things to my library. I add things to playlists. I listen to music and I think it's a great app. And again, 4.8 on the app store, so the people for whom it's a terrible app might be the exception.
    - 2y ago
skrebbel 2y ago
I switched from Spotify from YT Music solely for UX reasons. Spotify is a weird flimsy thing to me (or at least was, back when I rage-quit it). Things like, their Android app didn't even have a "play album" button. Random simple stuff just was made needlessly hard. Queueing was weird, it seemed to nudge you to shuffling / algorithmic playback, they had this weird podcast thing going on that was just in the way, and so on. YT Music on the other hand, has excellent UX in my opinion. This surprised me, given Google's generally mediocre UX design, but they really got a bunch of competent people on this one. All the basics work the way you'd expect (and that's not trivial to get right). Play, queue, play next. Play album, shuffle, it all just generally does what I expect it to do and I can mostly find the buttons I want easily. You can turn off autoplay. Gapless album playback is on by default. It.. just works! Also I find the algorithmic autoplay to be pretty great, found some great new artists that way. The fact that the catalog is bigger because it includes weird bootleg recordings and live sets and anything music-y ever uploaded to YouTube, is a nice bonus. But for me, the UX sells it.
- Mindwipe 2y ago
  The YouTube Music UI fails at very basic things. Play a track that Google seems is "for children" and you are unable to navigate to another track or browse without it stopping playing, because the service inherited YT's clumsy COPPA compliance solution. The UI can't cope with long titles. It uses space badly. It doesn't surface content well (no Christmas playlist on the front page during December). It's a UI mess. I tried switching my family to it since we pay for YT Premium anyway and faced a total revolt.
- nunez 2y ago
  I found Spotify to be very playlist-oriented. Not great for people who listen to albums straight through. Things like pushing albums to a queue were not possible on the platform (IIRC the best you could do is play albums "next").
  - prpl 2y ago
    you can add albums to the queue. Have been able to for a long time.
soulofmischief 2y ago
If the Spotify UI was the only way I could consume music, I would never listen to another song again. It's ugly, barely customizable, wastes space, wastes time, and it's flat-out user hostile, just like recent YouTube UI changes. Except unlike YouTube, I cannot reasonably modify the style and functionality to my liking, or easily use third-party clients. It seems to me the most ethical mode of consumption which doesn't compromise consumer integrity and freedom is to use YouTube, or pirate, and to make up for lost royalties by directly supporting creators and encouraging creators to cut out the middlemen.
jMyles 2y ago
Vanilla VLC still feels like the best user experience to me.
- CasperH2O 2y ago
  Im still on Winamp, still got the keyboard keys in my muscle memory.
- rpdillon 2y ago
  Agreed! Still my go-to across desktop and mobile.
shepherdjerred 2y ago
Spotify has such a terrible app, at least on iOS. If you download a song and have a weak cellular/WiFi connection the app prefers the connection over the downloaded song, so you just can't listen to music unless you turn on offline mode. Similarly, if you have a weak connection and go back a song that song isn't cached which is infuriating. This mostly happened when I was getting into my car which is barely in WiFi range but the connection wasn't stable enough to be usable, so I'd have to start driving before I could interact with Spotify. Anyway, I switched to Apple Music a year or two ago. Spotify is trying to lock users in with the social aspect (e.g. Spotify Wrapped) but it's just not worth it.
- oarfish 2y ago
  Man, there's few things as infuriating as the Spotify app refusing to play a downloaded podcast unless i connect to the internet. can disconnect right after it starts playing, so it makes no sense.
jimmaswell 2y ago
I've been on a streak of days-long roadtrips using YouTube in my car for about a year and the experience has been great for me on the whole.

denkmoon 2y ago

The audio quality of most music on YTM is abysmal.

llm_nerd 2y ago
??? Studio provided digital masters will of course be identical across all of the services. Apple Music has the upper hand on the very high end with full lossless streaming, but that's irrelevant to almost everyone listening in a compromised situation -- like 100% of bluetooth headsets -- and YT Premium's 256Kbps AAC is extremely high quality.
- Avamander 2y ago
  If it has been uploaded with that quality. It's not like YouTube is giving it's replacement tool to anyone regular to use, for better-quality uploads.
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    You, along with many others, seem very confused about this. No one is talking about random people uploading their MP3s to YouTube the video service. YouTube Music is a separate service. The music is provided by music labels in exactly the same way it is provided to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and others. Music labels provide digital masters and the streaming service encodes as necessary for their users.
    - denkmoon 2y ago
      Yeah, YTM isn't a _completely_ separate service. It's just a different frontend to YouTube. If you search for one of those "official" music label uploaded songs on youtube, you'll get the exact same video ID as you get on YTM. Conversely, if there isn't an "official" copy uploaded, you'll get joe's random 128kbps triple-encoded upload.
    - anamexis 2y ago
      YouTube Music definitely has just standard YouTube videos uploaded by random people. It's one of the only reasons I use YouTube Music - listening to vinyl rips of things that were never released in other formats.

kevingadd 2y ago

YouTube Music is one of the worst pieces of software ever created. That's the only reason I use Spotify at all. YTM on Android crashes randomly, playback stops randomly, it forgets your playback position in podcasts randomly, sometimes it breaks itself so hard that you have to hard reboot your phone to fix it. It's incredible.

cactusplant7374 2y ago

One doesn't even need to pay for YouTube. Just install Brave browser.

Mond_ 2y ago

Habits and familiarity are pretty powerful forces.

solardev 2y ago

Spotify has awesome playlists, both from the community and curated by the company itself. YouTube is much worse at that, last time I checked. Mostly shitty spam, as with everything Google. I don't really listen to individual songs or albums, but look for "classic rock for workouts" or "relaxing instrumental for work" etc. Spotify is great for that.

nothercastle 2y ago
How do you find decent community curated playlists
- solardev 2y ago
  I just search as normal and look in the playlists. Usually something in the top 2 or 3 results is a good one. I think they're ranked by number of saves or something? Not sure. The official ones labeled "Spotify" are also quite good.

jakkos 2y ago

I switched to YouTube Music from Spotify years ago, but have friends who refuse to switch, my understanding is: - The YTM UI just feels worse than Spotify - YTM has no official desktop app - Moving all your liked songs and playlists over is annoying - The whole shutting down Google Play Music just to release Youtube Music did a lot of damage to their "brand mindshare" - People think it just means watching music videos on YouTube - Everyone they know uses Spotify and they like seeing what their friends are listening to and it's easier to share links to songs within platform

joemi 2y ago
> - Moving all your liked songs and playlists over is annoying I've switched music streaming services a few times and this is always a pain, no matter which streaming service. I really really wish there were some universal export/import format that all these services shared to make switching easier (but I understand that might not be in their interest).
- internet101010 2y ago
  A universal track id number combined with m3u?
kid64 2y ago
To convert links, try this: https://idonthavespotify.donado.co/ https://idonthavespotify.donado.co/

wesselbindt 2y ago

From my end the decision to not use the Google product comes from two places. Firstly, any money I send to Google is probably a net negative for the human race as a whole (though the same could probably be said for Spotify). Secondly (and much more importantly for me personally), YouTube is quite addictive, and having premium would enable me. If someone offered me a music streaming subscription with a bit of free crack cocaine on the side, I would not take it over someone offering me just the subscription, regardless of the price (up to a point)

soulofmischief 2y ago
As a counterpoint, YouTube is a vast chasm of highly educational and worthwhile media. There's no other space like it for long-form independent educators, and it's a creative space we need to protect by keeping it economically viable for YouTube. At least until comparable spaces (with sustainable audiences) exist.
- Minor49er 2y ago
  There are plenty of better alternatives to YouTube for independent educational media. For example, Udemy, Skillshare, or Coursera which allow independent educators and don't rely on poor recommendation algorithms or incessant advertising (both from the platform and in sponsorships)
  - dylan604 2y ago
    Better alternative in some regards, maybe, but for discoverability, there is no bigger platform than YT. It's the Walmart of media consumption with a "you're going to make it up in volume" concepts
  - soulofmischief 2y ago
    I've sampled all of those services. None of those have comparable, sustainable mass audiences like YouTube. They also lack integration with my other consumption, which YouTube provides. And in general, the quality of independent educational content I find on YouTube is quite good and is often a product of YouTube culture itself, now that we are no longer in the first generation of YT creators, and I quite like the culture and its aesthetic. Udemy, Skillshare and Coursera have failed to create a product which attracts me, and the general population. Their focus on specific content and consumption habits is both a blessing and a curse, depending on who you ask.

brtkdotse 2y ago

Or Apples family offering. For ~€40 we get Apple Music, Apple TV+, 2 TB of iCloud and probably something more for the whole family.

SecretDreams 2y ago

YouTube music's biggest issue is that it's run by Google. The second biggest issue is that they kill their best apps every 5-10 years. YouTube music is only recently getting to Google music parity.. the app that they killed 5 years back and replaced with YT music. Also, they've ruined whatever they offered for podcast management when they killed google podcasts and tried to direct users to YT music -_-.

pas 2y ago
their podcast integration works. it's not amaaazing but no issues with it. the migration from Google Play Music was pretty uneventful for me. (i assume folks with huge uploaded libraries might not share this impression.)

tomrod 2y ago

Newpipe is great here too, as well as Freetube.

mightyham 2y ago

I would be more interested in YouTube music if it allowed users to play the audio of any video. Right now, a video has to be tagged by the creator as music for it to be made available on the app.

Stealthisbook 2y ago

YT Music is generally as good or better for casual listening. There's a potential deal breaking quirk in that some tracks are user uploads. You can find obscure stuff that's not easily available elsewhere, but I've found quite a few tracks that are low quality CD or vinyl rips, and concert bootlegs. If you build a playlist, it's not easy to weed out the trash.

Avamander 2y ago

YouTube doesn't let me add certain tracks to playlists because it has mistakenly labeled them as for kids. It's a stupid platform with way dumber limitations than Spotify.

matwood 2y ago

I never cared for Spotify, but I was an early Google Play Music user. Loved it. Then they forced me to YT music and I left for Apple. The YT UI was so bad. Now I have both AM and YTM because of bundling. AM stream quality is noticeably better. The YTM UI has gotten better over the years and I think the sheer size of YTM means there are tons of playlists which I like. My preference now would be to duplicate all the YTM user playlists to AM.

eek2121 2y ago

I use Apple because of the One plan. Not about to pay for anything else.

nunez 2y ago

I tried switching to it years ago after I was forced to migrate from Play Music (which was superior, IMO). I was _very_ turned off to YT Music matching songs in my library with random audio tracks from YT videos. Perhaps they no longer do this, but I went with Apple Music, which is what I've used since. And now I'm mad about Play Music shutting down again! (They, Amazon Music and iTunes/Apple Music had a true "music locker" service where you could upload songs from your library, no matter the source, and play them anywhere. iTunes/Apple Music is the only one left that does this, and even then, I'm not sure if the iTunes part works on Android.)

int_19h 2y ago
I'm not sure if the upload part works, but once it's uploaded it plays just fine.
jakkos 2y ago
> I was _very_ turned off to YT Music matching songs in my library with random audio tracks from YT videos. Perhaps they no longer do this I was also mega turned off by this... initially. At some point it stopped happening to me unintentionally and now it only really happens if I start playing from a YouTube video (which is actually quite help for some obscure songs/remixes). You can also turn off this functionality all together in the settings. > a true "music locker" service where you could upload songs from your library, no matter the source, and play them anywhere You can upload your own music and then stream it from any device on YouTube Music now

badgersnake 2y ago

For me a few reasons: * cost isn’t really a factor, a couple of quid either way ain’t gonna impact my life * what I’m interested in is the artists I rate getting paid. * Google are even more evil than Spotify.

drakonka 2y ago

I've been using YT Music for years and have all my playlists there, but am now considering switching to Spotify because _everyone_ I know sends me Spotify links. I then also feel bad sharing YT Music links when their entire ecosystem (car audio etc) is centered on Spotify, and YouTube is likely to play an ad if they're not a subscriber. Music sharing is kind of a big thing for me and it sucks that I'm now paying for a service I don't use just to share links with people >.<

peheje 2y ago
I hear you, just a bandaid but maybe checkout https://github.com/sjdonado/idonthavespotify https://github.com/sjdonado/idonthavespotify
- drakonka 2y ago
  Oh that might do! I'll try it, thank you.
wlesieutre 2y ago
I’ve seen https://idonthavespotify.donado.co https://idonthavespotify.donado.co used for converting between services but when I tried it just now with some Apple Music links it identified albums wrong Sharing anyway in case YouTube music links work better
- drakonka 2y ago
  I just tried this via that site as well as the Raycast extension and unfortunately keep getting server errors :(

aliher1911 2y ago

Spotify has albeit unofficial headless client for linux. None of other services I know does. It implements the same interface as smart speakers so can be controlled remotely by any gui client.

riazrizvi 2y ago

Yes! Spotify evidently does something. You can watch the Netflix show, that takes the original approach to explaining its success from the different angles of key people involved, to review one of the best approaches to answering this question for a company I’ve ever seen. In a world where musicians and listeners have all the other choices to connect still, IMO Spotify completely deserves its position. I detest the low effort complaints by ppl on Reddit saying their financial success is not deserved.

crazygringo 2y ago

Recommendations and playlists. Spotify isn't primarily about playing music for me, it's about finding new music to play. And Spotify's just where all of that is. The quality of the radio recommendations, the fact that there's always a playlist for every TV show soundtrack, that artists put together their own playlists, the quality and variety of playlists overall, and it's where cool people I know create and update their public playlists. None of the other services seem to come close in terms of that. I see links to Spotify playlists all over the internet. I don't think I've ever seen a link to a YouTube Music playlist?

pas 2y ago
YT Music recommender algo is pretty good. Easy to start a mix/radio from any track/video or playlist. There are public playlists, though I have no idea how well curated they are.
- pohuing 2y ago
  It's also got a lot more niche music in it. I've switched because that. Practical everyone is on YouTube(willing or not), good luck finding that one self published song from 2009 uploaded from an abandoned account on Spotify though.
  - pas 2y ago
    Exactly. Recordings of live sets, strange/interesting post/doom/stoner metal albums, and - for better or worse - all the bootlegged stuff that Spotify doesn't have because legal disputes as user uploads.
alberto_balsam 2y ago
The Spotify app started suggesting me albums it labels as "Sponsored recommendations" a few months ago and it's really put me off. Now it's hard to trust how good it is at finding new music if Spotify is admitting to deliberately excluding most of its database and prefiltering down to its sponsors. You're right though, the rest of the things you mention do make it much tougher to decide on whether to switch and what to switch to.

_Algernon_ 2y ago

I consider Youtube negative value. It is a service explicitly designed to suck up as much as possible of my time / attention, and youtube doesn't change how their algorithm works just because you pay for it with real money. The watchtime maximizing works the exact same time as at the very least all the content produced withing the ecosystem still needs to be watchtime maximizing. Why would I ever pay for that? Edit-to-add: Not to mention that I have yet to forgive google for killing Play Music, a much superior service.

beepbooptheory 2y ago
People don't talk about this much, but much of Play Music lives on in Youtube Music. I am not sure if its because I was grandmothered in or something, but all my mp3s that are definitely not otherwise on YouTube still shockingly exist in my Youtube Music "Library".
- Groxx 2y ago
  The storage and library is, yes, AFAICT. It's a "full" migration, everyone I know who used Play Music heavily has had no data-retention issues at all with YT Music. But the UX is so much worse, it's just mindblowing. Basically all of them left for something else eventually.

jillyboel 2y ago

Does youtube music have a desktop app yet? Or do they still expect me to hunt down one of my many tabs in one of my many browser windows any time I want to change a song? It's a ridiculous UX killer. I also don't want my music to stop when I restart my browser.

Dylan16807 2y ago
> do they still expect me to hunt down one of my many tabs in one of my many browser windows any time I want to change a song Pin the tab? And chrome has a button to show all playing media in all tabs. You could also use a separate profile to solve both the finding and the browser-closing issues.
- jillyboel 2y ago
  They could also just release a desktop app like a normal company

can16358p 2y ago

I'm not a Spotify user, I'm an Apple Music user, though if there wasn't Apple Music I'd use Spotify. The reason that I'd never use YT Music is that I never trust anything from Google: their interfaces are ugly, everything's user-unfriendly, and they have the habit of discontinuing a service at any time. Also it has the impression of not really being well-thought as a product: why name a music service after a video service? I know it's not the case but it always reminds me of those low quality music playlists where people collected low quality unofficial music videos back then in YT just for the music: simply not the right tool for the job.

hawski 2y ago
A lot of people listened to music from YouTube as their primary source besides an FM radio before Spotify was available as it is now. YouTube somewhat famously signed deals with music labels back in the day. Content ID was the controversial, but necessary compromise for the music to remain on YouTube. I am pretty sure a very significant percentage of music listeners globally listen mainly from YouTube, I did it and I also saw a lot of people doing it. It may seem stupid or counter productive, but it is easy and good enough. YT Music is a clear upgrade for those users. I think YT Music makes more sense than many of the Google initiatives and it will continue to make sense as long as they will have deals with music labels.
- antihero 2y ago
  Those people generally didn’t care about audio quality, YouTube for me seems synonymous with unreliable bit rates and disorganisation.
  - jimmaswell 2y ago
    Quoting a reddit post: > Youtube's best audio is format 251: Opus with a variable bitrate target of 128k. Note that 128k Opus is approximately equal in quality to 320k mp3 (as in, it's generally considered transparent) I care a lot about audio quality and I use YT premium for music just about every day. You also get enhanced bitrate on some videos with premium.

rideontime 2y ago

Because the Youtube Music app is garbage. I already have Youtube premium and tried cancelling my Spotify for a few months, even transferred my saved playlists over, and it was a horrible enough experience that I'm back to paying for both.

mcmcmc 2y ago
That’s a little pot calling the kettle black. The Spotify app has been horrendous for years, ever since they started jamming in all the podcasts and garbage.
redhale 2y ago
100% this. I pay for YT Premium so I have YT Music for free, and I still choose to pay for Spotify because the YT Music app is that bad. Spotify's app is not perfect by any stretch, but comparatively it's amazing. I really miss the old Google Music service. But so goes almost any product run by Google for long enough -- slowly and inevitably into the ground (at least in terms of user experience, if not always in market share).
- retrochameleon 2y ago
  Wow. YT Music must be extremely bad if Spotify is comparatively amazing. There are so many UX and general usability issues that drive me crazy and crazier still that they have made essentially 0 improvements to the app UX in the last 5 years. Other streaming services are unfortunately not an adequate replacement for myself, so I'm stuck with Spotify for now, unless I become determined to download my entire 8k+ library of songs for self-hosted options.

ClimaxGravely 2y ago

I have youtube premium and music. I've never tried spotify but I have to believe it's better than youtube music. It's hard to believe it could possibly be worse.

refulgentis 2y ago

Standard Google stuff. For context, I'm an ex-Googler, worked there 2016-2023 during this. For entertainment's sake, I'll list it as I experienced it, rather than just rotely saying "lol disorganized" - 2008-2015: Huge, absurd Apple fanboy. waiter => create startup => iOS dev. Sold it. - 2016: Apple rejects me b/c no degree, suggests calling back in a couple years. Google makes me an offer. I join Google. - October 2016: Wow Pixel looks cool...I work on Android watches...lets try Pixel. - November 2016: I've been missing out on so much with web services!!! Google is in the future while Apple is in the past!! Even just Google Play Music: Google has iTunes in the browser. Wow!!!! - 2017: Aw they're shutting down Google Play Music...but hey, I get it! I can see the internal musings and it makes sense, YouTube can commit more resources and has a great content catalog! - 2018: Wow this dogfood version is great! Lots missing from Google Play Music, seems like a thin shim over YouTube x "play audio only" button x music rights, but there's plenty of time to iterate before release! - 2019: Ehhh meh this is starting to feel weird, hasn't really evolved much. I do love the recommendation feed better! There's still some stuff to add back, I know they're working on adding your own files back, and they have that excellent Google Play Music/iTunes in the browser UI to be inspired by! - 2020: Goodbye Play Music, sunset, gone. Ehhhh nothing really changed with YouTube Music, but at least I'm saving money compared to Spotify - 2022: Podcasts is gonna get sunset and merged into YouTube Music? Makes sense, I guess. - 2023: Oh man, they sunset Podcasts and YouTube Music wasn't actually prepared for this, they had the absolute MVP for Podcasts...Oh man, look at public backlash. Man, BigCo management is hard...at the top, they only have bandwidth for Game of Thrones stuff of "We should take podcasts!!" but "delegate" the actual work and people are people, they do exactly what they need to with exactly the resources they have. I guess its cool they're publicly owning the backlash. - 2024: I am still using YouTube Music. I see your comment on HN, and realize I would have been happier on Spotify all along.

imbnwa 2y ago

Terrible app, variable quality since they clearly re-use music uploaded originally as video with a static background. Apple Music is king of streaming quality, however neither Apple Music nor YTM can beat Spotify's algorithm as far as the kind of music I listen to is concerned.

paxys 2y ago

I pay for YouTube Premium but still don't use the music app because of how bad it is. They are not a real competitor to Spotify.

kid64 2y ago
I don't pay attention to Spotify, are you saying YT Music is lacking features? If so, which one(s)?

yellowapple 2y ago

Why use either when you can download songs from normal YouTube (via yt-dlp) for free? I've indeed been asking myself that, as a current Spotify customer. The whole point of paying for a streaming service is the convenience of it combined with the monetary support of the artists on it. If Spotify is decreasingly convenient, and Spotify is decreasingly paying artists their fair share, then at some point I might as well just go back to torrenting whole discographies like it's 2005.