YouTube Music marks YouTube's breakout into getting serious about music. It includes many useful features that make it a serious free music competitor to services like Spotify, especially when a YouTube Red subscription also includes a Google Play Music subscription.

YouTube is already pretty great at creating custom stations based on my listening habits because I've used YouTube for listening to music videos for as long as YouTube was a thing, and who doesn't? YouTube is the place to look up music videos. These custom stations are sorted by genre and listening habits, and I have to say, they work pretty well. I'm not used to all the sides of the music spectrum I listen to being blended together in one radio station. Electronic, pop, and J-pop are all blended together into some awesome stations. You can even customize the variety of genres included in each station, from less, to balanced, to more. To top it all off, you can even thumbs up or down songs that come up in these stations in order to get YouTube Music to know more about what you like and what you don't like. Also, because of YouTube's huge audience, they're is able to give some pretty awesome trending songs so you always stay up to date with trending artists.

One of the best features included in YouTube Music is the ability to not only watch videos, you can toggle a switch in the top-right to swap over to music mode. This saves data and works very well when you don't plan to watch the video and just want to listen to some music. This feature is made much better when you're a YouTube Red subscriber and have the ability to listen to music in the background while using other apps, as well as the ability to listen with your phone locked.

The interface is gorgeous. It's well designed following Google's material principal, and as far as I can see the interface changes depending on the dominant color in the thumbnail. It's easy to navigate using gestures to minimize the music video page and open the side menu.

YouTube Music is currently available for download on Android, iOS, and on browsers everywhere.

Image source: Tech Crunch

Yesterday Google announced a new service related to YouTube and music, called YouTube Red. YouTube Red is $9.99/mo for no ads on YouTube videos across devices, background playback on mobile, and the ability to save videos for viewing offline. What most people who have issue with it think is that $9.99/mo is very steep for what you get. That's understandable, except Google is downplaying the fact that it comes with a subscription to Google Play Music.

Google Play Music is a Spotify and Apple Music competitor I wrote about in my post The Battle of Online Music Streaming. Previously, Google Play Music subscribers had no ads exclusively on verified music videos. Background playback was promised, but it wasn't ever stable. With the introduction of YouTube Red, this only adds more value to Google Play Music. Personally, because I am a Play Music subscriber, I will get YouTube Red for free when it launches. That's incredibly generous of Google to combine them.

Google also announced the launch of the YouTube Music app, which isn't exclusive to Red subscribers. It's basically a YouTube app which is optimized for music and background playback. If you don't have a Red subscription, however, you will see ads before videos and videos will not play in the background.

If you aren't interested in a music service such as Google Play Music, $9.99/mo is definitely too much. Google should have branded YouTube Red and Google Play Music closer together in order to signify what a great deal you're getting having them both, as well as offer the option to get YouTube Red exclusively for a cheaper price. When Google puts them in their own separate packages, you're really only seeing half the deal on each website. It's incredibly bad marketing, but really great for users if you know what a good deal looks like. Hopefully this is just another step into offering a theorized "Google Unlimited" service, which would give access to music, books, videos, and maybe even apps all through a monthly price. While Google hasn't shown plans to unite all of these under one roof, having Play Music and YouTube Red subscriptions mirror each-other shows promise. Here's to hoping in the future Google expands on what Spotify started, with the idea of unlimited entertainment.

Image source: YouTube