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, Bose speakers, Sonos 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 screen 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.
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 preferences.
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 explore 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 desktop 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 playlists
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 chromecast
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 cast 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 wi-fi 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
playing screen that'll 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 controls 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 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 and to q 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
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 dots menu on the now playing page go to artist will take you
to the artists 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 in singles videos other artists related to this one
that fans might like and an 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 alright 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 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 a
hundred thousand songs from your own personal music
library to the service you can do this by going to
music.youtube.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 mixtape that'll 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 note 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 section 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 alright well that covers the
main different sections of the youtube music
app 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 the 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
wi-fi 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 wi-fi versus mobile 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 recommendations 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 offline
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 three dollars a month more so for me
that was totally worth it now if you like this video and found it helpful
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for 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.