Google’s streaming music platform holds many secrets, here’s everything you need to know to master it at your fingertips.
Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Tidal, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, streaming music platforms abound. If all offer a fairly comparable catalog of titles, they often differ from each other thanks to the features they offer. Everyone is then free to make their choice according to their affinities.
But YouTube Music (which is among the newer services along with Apple Music, both having launched in 2015) is a special case, however. In its paid version, the service is indeed attached to the YouTube Premium offer, which allows you to watch videos without advertising and enjoy content in the background, screen off. Therefore, if you are a heavy YouTube user, the Premium offer can only be beneficial.
If you’ve succumbed to the temptation of YouTube Premium and ditched Deezer or Spotify to switch to YouTube Music, you’re probably going to need some time to adapt in order to get to grips with the platform’s features.
To guide you, you will find below tips and hidden functions that will surely help you to make the most of the service at your fingertips.
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1. Improve recommendations
Even though YouTube Music asked you when you signed up to select several artists to define your musical tastes, the recommendations offered by the platform may not always be very relevant.
To improve your recommendations, several solutions exist. The first is to click thumbs up or thumbs down to indicate whether you like the song you’re playing or hate it. YouTube Music’s recommendation algorithm feeds on your likes to improve itself in order to suggest songs corresponding to your tastes. Do not hesitate to give your opinion during the reading of a piece.
You can also tell YouTube Music about new artists that match your tastes, just like you did when you signed up.
To do this, select your avatar in the top right and go to Settings. Then enter the Recommendations menu and go to Get Better Recommendations.
Scroll through the suggested artists, select the ones you like and press OK to validate your selection.
YouTube Music recommendations should now reflect the new artists you’ve chosen.
2. Search a song by its lyrics
If you know the lyrics to a song but don’t know the title, you can search for it in YouTube Music by directly entering some lyrics. Tap the magnifying glass icon to access the search engine, then type in the lyrics of the song.
3. Delete your search history
YouTube Music does not offer an incognito mode (like on Google Maps), if you come looking for a slightly shameful track like the very distinguished Tirlipinpon, by the late Carlos, this title is now in your search history.
Fortunately, it is possible to clean it up. To do this, tap on your avatar and go to the Settings app.
Then enter Privacy and location, then Manage search history.
Your Google account data management page will appear, tap the Confirm button at the very bottom to validate your identity using your password to access your full history.
All you have to do is press the small cross associated with your search to permanently delete it from your history.
4. Wake up to YouTube Music
If you use an Android smartphone and you use it as an alarm clock, know that it is quite possible to wake up to the sound of your favorite YouTube Music playlist.
To do this, open the Clock app on your smartphone (Google’s), set an alarm as you usually do, and tap Default ringtone.
In the Alarm sound window that appears, select YouTube Music and choose the song, playlist, album or mix with which you want to be released from the arms of Morpheus.
5. Create collaborative playlists
Creating playlists alone can quickly become very boring. If you go around in circles and feel like you’re listening to the same music all the time, why not create a collaborative playlist? YouTube Music indeed offers this option, which will allow you to feed a playlist to several people.
Go to the Library tab for this. Then go to the Playlists menu, tap on New Playlist and give your playlist a name.
Then choose the level of privacy you want to give to this playlist and press the Create button.
At this point, only you can power it. Now open your playlist and tap the pencil icon to edit it.
In the window that appears, tap Collaborate and enable Collaborators can add titles and videos.
Then tap the Share button and tap for your preferred way to share your playlist with your friends.
As soon as they click on your playlist link, they will be added as collaborators and can in turn contribute to this playlist.
6. Download your custom offline mix
It is very often when you have no Internet connection at all that you wish you could listen to music. If YouTube Music offers, like the competition, to download songs locally to listen to them offline, the risk of ending up listening to the same tune all the time is rather high.
So why not let YouTube Music take care of the choice for you? The app indeed has a particularly interesting feature that, when activated, downloads a playlist containing a set number of songs that will be updated over time based on what you like.
Tap on your Avatar and go to the Downloads menu. Then tap the gear icon to change your Downloads settings.
Then activate the Download offline mix option, and adjust the slider that appears to set the maximum number of songs you want to download in said mix.
Close the settings by tapping on the small cross at the top of the screen. Logically, YouTube Music should instantly launch the download of a mix composed of songs likely to please you, based on your recommendations, your likes and your previous listenings.
7. Listen in the highest quality
Nowadays, the connection speed offered by fiber and the mobile data envelopes are substantial enough to allow you to listen to your music by streaming it in its highest quality.
To make sure you’re always listening to your music in high quality, tap on your avatar and go to Settings in the app. Then enter Download and Storage and then in the Audio Quality section, select High. Everything you listen to now will be streamed in the highest quality available on YouTube Music.