Google is famous for its love of creating a huge number of projects that partially or completely copy each other's functionality. It is difficult to say what this is connected with, but the fact remains that the company has a lot of duplicating services. Some are closed, others remain. Another such clone is Youtube Music, which has recently been launched in Russia.
It largely repeats the good old Google Music, while listening to music, it offers to view video clips. In fact, the name clearly reflects the essence of the service – it's music Youtube. Their close integration with Youtube also makes them similar. In other words, if you like listening to music and watching videos on Youtube, then this service was created especially for you.
There is an application for both iOS and Android, and, according to tradition, given the focus of the blog on Android, consider the application on this particular operating system. The application weighs a little, only 15 MB.
At the first launch, I was offered to log into my Google account and then, without leaving the checkout, try a premium subscription for free in the first month, and then for 169 rubles per month. A very familiar price, do different music services rely on each other? No, it can't be …)
I note right away that if you plan to use the application as the main player to listen to music in the background, then you cannot do without a subscription – the music in the background did not want to play without it. In addition to the background mode, the subscription will allow you to listen to music when the application is minimized, as well as save it for later listening offline.
At the next stage, I had to teach the service to my musical tastes, marking circles with performers whose music I like. By the way, as soon as you mark a circle, a few more appear under it, in the opinion of the service, similar or those that you might potentially like.
Of course, the application, like any Google service, will ask for access to your location in order to search for music for you based on where you are. I wonder what does the AK-47 have to do with me and where I am? Google, what are you doing, don't disgrace me …
I wonder what the selections will be when you are in different parts of the city? I don't think they are very different. But if we are talking about moving between countries, then there may be more differences. But how often will this happen to the average Russian?
home
After all the initial settings, we get to the 'Home' tab.
This tab contains thematic collections, news, etc., divided by mood, occupation, style. Each collection has several subtopics that allow you to more accurately hit the preferences. Judging by the description, these collections will also be formed over time based on your tastes and preferences (when Big Brother has collected enough compromising evidence about you).
Hotlist
The next tab is 'Hotlist'.
New and popular videos are collected here. Either I am a retrograde, or too fastidious, but for me personally, there was nothing interesting there …
Somehow everything is by. Hopefully, over time this service will get to know me better and, besides all the popular new nonsense, will start offering older music.
The last tab is 'Library'.
It contains the saved content, your playlists, videos and music you like, as well as artists. Saved content is worth mentioning separately. You can customize the amount of offline mix to be saved. It can be from 1 to 100 songs, which will be available even without an Internet connection. This mix will include the compositions that you listen to most often, which means that the composition of this mix can change over time without your direct participation.
On the playback controls page, in addition to the standard controls typical for most music applications, there is a button at the top of the screen to quickly switch between clip and music only mode.
From the same screen, through the context menu, you can not only go to the artist's page, open the album, save the song and share it, but also turn on the radio station.
This setting includes a selection of similar music. An interesting function, original. That is, you choose the song you like, while playing it, click on 'Turn on the radio station' and get a radio with similar music (according to the service).
So far, he is often mistaken, but each time the selections become more accurate. Let's see what happens in a month or two.
If you turn the phone to a horizontal position, the application will open in full screen, and the clip, if video is on, will be played in landscape view.
In addition, the application also has settings in the usual sense of the word.
By clicking on your icon in the upper right corner, you can go to the account settings, and there, to the application settings. In the settings, you can prevent the application from working through mobile networks, select the quality, enable traffic saving, disable video (as on the playback screen), view previously downloaded content. See screenshots for more details.
To be honest, the application does not impress with the flexibility of settings. And most importantly, I have not found a single mention of the quality of the music. There is only video quality (the maximum option is only 720p).
Perhaps these are interrelated settings, and if you turn on high quality video, even in the 'Music only' mode, high quality sound is turned on, but this is not certain. It feels like the quality of the music decreases when you turn on traffic saving, and that's it. A very strange decision for a music service. Very strange.
Instead of a conclusion, let's talk about the options for premium subscriptions, since there are several of them and they are interconnected.
As mentioned above, a subscription to Youtube Music costs 169 rubles per month. There is an opportunity to issue a family subscription option for a total of six accounts for only 269 rubles. For this money, you will get the opportunity to listen to music without ads, in the background and offline.
There is another, more expensive, but more interesting option, which, in my opinion, will be the most popular – YouTube Premium.
When you design this option, you will be able to watch videos on YouTube without ads, save them to your device for offline viewing, and also YouTube Originals, which is not very necessary in Russia at the moment, – films and TV shows, will be added to all the previous ones. There is also a family option for 299 rubles, which is not much for such opportunities.
The main disadvantage is that films and TV series are currently only for the English-speaking viewer, there are not even subtitles. But who knows what will happen next.
By the way, if you have a Google Play Music subscription, then you have a subscription to everything else. Here's a trick.
For myself, I have not yet decided whether I will use the service at the end of the free trial period, since the sound quality, which for me is perhaps the main criterion, confuses most of all, and here YouTube loses to my favorite Spotify. On the YouTube side, on the other hand, is the assortment, variety, and Google algorithms as the app searches its entire database, including the large YouTube with its limitless user-generated library.
In a word, the product is interesting, you need to try it, while keeping in mind the ability to get rid of ads on big YouTube as an additional value.