October marks the first anniversary of the dying of Google Play Music, leaving solely the sad shadow of a different music service, YouTube Music, in Google’s ecosystem. YouTube Music is exhibiting merely how far behind the streaming music wars it is with the announcement of a model new operate: background music playback. Beforehand, having fun with a streaming monitor on the ad-supported YouTube Music app would solely work for many who had the app open—navigating to at least one factor else in your phone would stop the music. Now, 5 years after the service’s launch and one yr after the shutdown of Google Play Music, you need to make the most of YouTube Music like—correctly—a music app with out paying for YouTube Premium.
One ultimate ingredient: this terribly elementary operate is barely rolling out to Canada subsequent month. For now, everyone else nonetheless can not use YouTube Music like a every day streaming music app with out paying for the service. Google says that free background playback will be on the market to “listeners everywhere in the world” in the end, nonetheless it hasn’t talked about when.
SoundCloud and Spotify provide free background streaming—as did Google Play Music sooner than it was shut down—nevertheless YouTube Music hasn’t been able to replicate that operate for the earlier 5 years. Subscribers to the $9.99 YouTube Music Premium have been able to play music inside the background, and the operate is accessible for music you will have uploaded your self. Nevertheless for many who have been listening to the ad-supported streaming catalog, the music merely stopped inside the background.
The free tier of YouTube moreover limits background playback, and YouTube Music’s tangled connection to YouTube is our best guess for why YouTube Music has been so sluggish to undertake this operate. YouTube’s music deal possibly hasn’t allowed for background playback with out paying additional, and since music provides are negotiated by nation, it’s wise {{that a}} YouTube Music renegotiation would roll out on a country-by-country basis, with Canada being first.
