How to use YouTube Music

If you're like me and you've been using Google play music for the past couple of years and find yourself needing to transition over to youtube music or you're just curious about what youtube music has to offer , you're in the right place .

So let's dive into how to use youtube music , youtube music is a dedicated music service from youtube , which is owned by Google that leverages youtube's insanely large music catalog with a heavy emphasis on video and live performances .

Since a lot of the time youtube is the only place some of these live performances are housed .

The service is available on both Android and IOS devices as well as smart speakers like Google's own speakers , bo speakers , sona speakers , JBL and others .

You can also use it from the web as well as through desktop apps on Mac and Windows .

When you first open the app , you'll be asked to select some artists that you like .

So youtube music can help narrow down the types of music that it'll play for you .

When you get to the main , you'll see that the layout is pretty simple , new releases at the top , followed by mixes , especially for you , there are a couple of mixes that I want to draw your attention to and the new release mix is a playlist updated every Friday of 30 new songs that youtube selects just for you based off your music preferences .

The Discover mix is a 50 song playlist updated every Wednesday with songs from artists that you already like as well as other songs that youtube thinks you'll like based off of your preference .

Your mix is an endless personalized music playlist .

Think of it like a radio station based off only the music and artists you like to listen to the , your likes playlist is a playlist made up entirely of the music .

You've given a thumbs up to on youtube music on mobile , down at the bottom of the app .

You'll see three tabs , Home Explorer and library , the navigation bar with those tabs remains there throughout the app .

So it's easy to move back and forth between these sections on de top .

These icons are actually located at the top of the app .

If you continue to scroll down on the home screen , you'll see more collections of playlists based either on what you've listened to before or what's currently popular or in the genres youtube thinks you'll like .

You can also of course create your own playlist as well and we'll talk about how to do that a little later on in the library section of the app at the top of the app .

You'll see a chrome cast button and a search button .

Casting in youtube music allows you to cast music to Google devices like smart speakers , smart displays tvs or groups of Google castt devices on a mobile device .

Just click the cast button to bring up the list of speakers that you already have the ability to cast to over wifi .

Select the speaker or speaker group and your music will then start playing on that speaker or speaker group while casting music .

If you click the cast button again , you'll see the song currently playing in the volume control .

If you're casting to a speaker group , you can click the arrow below the pause icon to display the volume levels for all the speakers in your Google cast speaker group .

Now , if you're trying to cast music from the desktop app , know that there's no dedicated cast button just yet , but you can still cast your audio , click the three dots at the top right hand corner and then select cast and then select the device or speaker group that you want to cast to .

Now when you want to play a song and you click it on the app , you'll see a new bar appear at the bottom of the app .

When you click it , it'll bring up the now plain screen that will take up the entire view to go back to the previous view .

Just swipe the now playing screen back down on mobile or click the bar again on desktop on the mobile app .

When it first comes up , you'll see some control slash by on the album artwork .

When you click on the album artwork again , you'll see that you have the options to share , download , add to a playlist , make album artwork , landscape and cast .

You can cast the song you're currently playing to a speaker or speaker group .

Right from this view .

If you're not casting music to a speaker or speaker group , you'll also see a song and video slider up at the top , which allows you to switch between the song or the music video version .

If available , one of the best ways to improve your experience with youtube music is when you're listening to a song to give a song that you really like a thumbs up or give it a thumbs down .

If you don't like the song , this will help refine your music suggestions over time .

You can give a song , a thumbs up or down in the youtube app on mobile and desktop in the now playing screen .

And if you're playing music through a smart speaker or an Android phone , you can actually tell the Google Assistant that you either like a song or don't like a song .

And the Google assistant will actually give that song , either a thumbs up or a thumbs down .

Let's look at a few other main parts of the now playing screen , the ability to scroll through to part of a song , skip back , skip forward , play slash pause .

You can also skip forward or skip back a track by swiping on the album artwork to see the songs that you youtube music is planning to play next swipe up the bar at the bottom .

You can then reshuffle the automated list of songs in the up next section .

Youtube tries to figure out what songs to play next based on the song you pick to listen to as well as your various music tastes .

You can click lyrics to see the lyrics of the song currently playing when available and related , which will show you songs you might also like based off what you're currently listening to playlists , you might like similar artists and more from the artists that you're currently listening to .

Now swiping back up to the now playing section with the album artwork .

There's one last part of this view to go over and that's the three dots up at the top .

When you click that you're going to see a lot of options .

First up is start radio .

This will start a radio station based off of the song you're currently playing radio stations will start with the song you chose and will then play other songs by other artists as well as songs by the same artist that you chose .

Play .

Next , we'll add the song to the play next section .

Add to QE will also add the song to the current queue of songs and to library which adds that song to your library download , which downloads the song for offline listening .

Add to playlist allows you to add the song to an existing playlist you've already created or it'll allow you to create a new one .

Go to album will take you to the album where the song is from in the album view , you'll see the album artwork with the album title and three key buttons add to library down , download and the three dots add to library will add this song to your youtube music library .

Download will download the song to your device and the three dots will give you some similar options that we've seen in the now plain three dots menu .

The album view will also allow you to start playing the album or shuffle it .

And if you just want to add specific songs to your library and not the whole album , you can click the three dots next to the song in the album view and select add to library back to the three dot menu on the now playing page , go to artist will take you to the artist's page in youtube music .

This will show you the artist's latest release .

Top songs allow you to shuffle a playlist of their songs or start a radio with that artist , see their albums and singles videos , other artists related to this one that fans might like .

And in about section giving you more information about the artist and their total view count across youtube .

The last options on the three dots menu are share , which allows you to share the song through your social platforms or send to friends and family report , which allows you to report content that might violate youtube's terms of service and then stats for nerds .

All right .

So that's the now plain view .

Now , there's one more way you can actually play music from youtube music .

And that's by using a smart assistant , you can use the Google Assistant on Android devices or other devices like smart speakers and smart displays that support the Google Assistant to make youtube music , your default service , go into your Google assistant settings , select services , then music and then select youtube music .

If you're an iphone user , you can use Siri to play music from youtube music .

Just tell Siri to play a song or artist on youtube music .

And as long as you have the youtube music app downloaded on your phone , it should work .

Now , let's move to the second section of the app , which is the Explorer tab .

The Explorer tab is divided into several sections , new albums and singles and moods and genres , plus new music videos .

One of the biggest advantages that youtube music has over its competition is music videos and that's thanks to the fact that the youtube music leverages youtube , the world's largest video platform and arguably the world's largest music catalog .

Thanks to the sheer number of indie artists who upload to the platform .

When you search for a song in the app , you'll see both songs and videos in your search results .

You can always switch back and forth between songs and the music videos in the app .

There's also a setting in the app that will force youtube music to default to audio only or album versions of songs .

The last section of the youtube music app to talk about is the library section and this highlights another key difference between youtube music and the competition youtube music lets you upload up to 100,000 songs from your own personal music library to the service .

You can do this by going to music dot youtube dot com and dragging your music files anywhere on the screen or click on your profile picture and then select upload music back to the app .

The library section will show you your downloads which you can set manually and the service will also automatically download some of your most listened to songs and playlists like songs that you've given a thumbs up to youtube also created a playlist called your offline mix tape that will include a lot of the songs .

It's noticed that you've listened to quite a bit .

The next section in library is playlists .

It's from here that you can see the playlist that you've created from your youtube music library .

Do you know that it'll sometimes include playlists from youtube that include music videos that you may have created a while back , which consists of mainly videos in this view .

You can also create a new playlist .

You can give it a title and set its privacy .

So yes , you can make playlists public .

So they're easy to share with your friends .

The artists , songs and albums section are all pretty similar .

So let's just go ahead and dive into one of them .

The song set will show you songs you've uploaded or added to your library as well as songs that you've liked in youtube music .

All in one view .

If you want to view the songs you've uploaded to your library , click on uploads at the top .

Subscriptions at the bottom will show you the artists you've subscribed to on youtube .

You can subscribe to artists in youtube music through the artist page .

But do note at the time that we've recorded this video when you subscribe to an artist through youtube music , you will also be subscribed to that artist on youtube .

All right .

Well , that covers the main different sections of the youtube music app .

Uh Before we wrap up , I want to quickly cover some important things that you can find in the settings of the youtube music app .

You can get to settings by clicking on your youtube profile icon at the top right hand corner of both the mobile and desktop app , then select settings at the top .

You'll see library and downloads .

This will show you how much storage youtube music's downloads are taking up .

You can also set download quality for downloaded music and video quality for videos .

Enabling smart downloads will trigger youtube music to save your favorite music offline automatically .

When you're on wifi with sufficient battery going back , you'll see options like stream via wi Fi only .

So it doesn't hog your mobile data or don't play music videos which will default youtube music to playing audio only or album versions of songs .

Here .

You can also set what audio quality you want on wifi versus data , youtube music also has an equalizer , setting a restricted mode to filter out explicit songs , captions , preferences and double tap to see advanced just enables stats for nerds .

Also , you'll see the ability to transfer from Google play music to youtube music .

Clicking this will guide you through the process of transferring all of your music from Google play music to youtube music .

Do note that it just copies over your music and data .

It doesn't remove anything from Google Play music .

Improve your record foundations will bring you to the artist bubble screen where you can select which artists you like to help improve your recommendations .

Like you saw when you first started using youtube music , the privacy and location settings contain settings to pause your watch history , pause , search history , use your play music history and also you can pause location based recommendations as well .

Lastly , let's talk about the paid version versus the free version of youtube music .

Now , the version of youtube music that I use is the paid version .

The free version does allow you to play specific songs by specific artists as well as radio stations , all that stuff just with ads .

Now , the premium version of youtube music does come with some pretty significant benefits including ad free listening plus background play , which will allow you to play music in the background of your mobile device .

Even when you close the app , download music off online use audio only mode .

This is the feature I demoed where you only want to listen to the album version of a song without loading the music video version .

If you're traveling to a different country where youtube music isn't available , the music content that's available to you at home will travel with you for up to six months .

So you can keep listening to all of your favorite music and your downloads will remain available to you for 30 days without an internet connection .

The last main benefit of youtube music premium is the ability to shuffle all of your downloads youtube music premium costs 9 99 a month here in the United States .

And that's not actually the version of the service I use .

I use what's called youtube premium , which costs 12 99 per month here in the US .

And what youtube premium gives you is you do get youtube music premium plus you get an ad free experience on youtube itself for just $3 a month more .

So for me , that was totally worth it .

Now , if you like this video and found it helpful , make sure you hit that thumbs up button below and subscribe to the channel to see more how to videos like this one as well as more tech related videos for six months later .

I'm Josh Teter .

Thanks for watching .