I’ve been using YouTube Music instead of Apple Music for two years, because there are all the new products there. Does it make sense in Russia?

It so happens that at the beginning of 2025 I have a subscription to as many as three music streaming services, but only one is used on a regular basis.

I’ve been getting YouTube Music for free for three years now and it seems like that’s the main reason why I’m still sticking with it. stupid service.

Below I tell you that YouTube Music is lagging behind compared to others, why I don’t start paying for a subscription to any other service, and where I plan to go after it.

Let’s start with one simple question: why do I even use it, although I have access to other, much better streaming services. And then I’ll explain why everything is bad there

YouTube Music has one decisive advantage

I didn’t subscribe to any of my streaming services separately; they all come in different sets of subscriptions.

Yandex Music included in Plus and mainly plays on Yandex Stations.

Apple Music in Russia, the region still works for me in my favorite bracelet Apple One Premiere for 995 rubles per monthwhich includes all the company’s services available in Russia.

Ranhe Apple Music was my main streaming service, but in the last three years all new tracks from my favorite bands have stopped appearing due to Universal, Sony and other balance holders in Russia.

YouTube Music The Turkish region comes as a bonus with YouTube Premium, without a subscription to which it is impossible to use YouTube outside of Russia.

The fact that of the three streaming services, only YouTube Music is in my mood regarding Russia’s attitude, became decisive. On YouTube Music I have access to all new international music, which makes up 95% of my playlist.

Unfortunately, this is where the advantages of Google’s service end. This is objectively the worst streaming I’ve ever tried.

There are a lot of small problems

On MacBook, the application only works via the web version

After two years of using YouTube Music, it’s a really bad service. Compared to Apple Music and Spotify, it doesn’t have many convenient features. And there is a feeling that Google is not saving on this matter.

Bend your fingers.

▪︎ There is no desktop app and the mobile app is not available in the Mac App Store.

Thanks to Apple, macOS Sonoma now has the ability to convert any website into a program, and that’s the only way I can save myself. The hack even helps me download tracks offline onto my MacBook.

▪︎The mobile application, even on the iPhone, is reminiscent of the web version in terms of imperfections: the animations are jerky, the design does not match the iOS style, and pages reset uncontrollably.

▪︎ The “Home” section with personal recommendations constantly changes the page design, which causes huge disappointment every time you open it.

▪︎ The Library section publishes recently added albums, but does not develop songs.

To see the programs that have been added to the software, each time you open the application, you must go to the “Music Liked” section, complemented by an expanded “Library” section that cannot be undocked. Difficult to figure out? That’s what I’m talking about.

▪︎ When opening an application, it always launches the “Home” section first, and not the completely open tab. Given her excitement, disappointment every time.

To play a song from the library, I need to make as many as three clicks!

▪︎ No spatial audio

▪︎No Hi-Fi sound quality, only chocolate “high”.

But the biggest disadvantage lies in the quality of support and convenience of the service itself.

The recommendations are very bad, which is strange for a YouTube developer

On what basis these strange songs appeared in recommendations based on my views is impossible to understand

Apple Music has a magical autoplay button ♾️. It plays tracks after your included playlists have ended.

The function selects songs similar in mood to the one you manually turned on and does it in a classically cool way.

Seriously, after the feature was shown in iOS 14, I fell in love with Apple Music all over again. And I never thought about any Spotify, which was known for such recommendations much earlier.

Yandex Music is just as good at selecting recommendations, sometimes even better than Apple Music. If in the Apple service I usually added every second song, then almost every one was in Russian.

Although YouTube Music has a “similar” tab, you have to explore it manually. Apple and Yandex automatically launch accurate recommendations based on the track

👎 YouTube Music will be great if you want to add at least a couple of songs at a time. The service knows how to select tracks based on your mood, but for some reason they are all the only passable ones.

You would think that two years ago I would have been more omnivorous, but no. In recent months, I sometimes asked Yandex Station to play music, and the tracks were constantly “liked.”

It’s very strange to receive such bad music recommendations because YouTube’s algorithms are perfect for creating new and interesting videos.

What’s even more annoying is that the problem in Google’s music service goes into the device settings during reception.

Even searching for new songs manually is useless

YouTube Music has three pages: Home with personal recommendations, Navigator with genres, global trends and personal Library.

In world trends and genres Navigator I don’t usually log in, so as a last ditch attempt, listen to some good music while I use the time Home. And this is some kind of hell.

The page changes its design every time. One day the first positions will be “Listen again”another day “Albums for you”in the third “Selections by track” and so on.

The funny thing is If you enable the service on iPhone and Mac at the same time, the order of sections and their content will be different on the Home page – if different accounts are connected.

Not only is there such a mess, both in the interface logic and inconsistency between Mac and iPhone, all these “recommendations” are most often absent from the topic.

Blocks “You haven’t listened for a long time” And “Listen again” sometimes they prepare the latest ones I listened to, and sometimes they prepare what I listened to a month ago. In this case, perform the same function. Meaning?

The “Albums for You” section offers old albums or records that I’ve already listened to to my heart’s content and don’t want anymore.

There are still “Heard in shorts” (who would even listen to this?), “From Your Library”which should be somehow different from “you haven’t listened to for a long time” and “Mixes for you”, again with songs from my library and similar to them, but collected always very poorly. And among all this junk from blocks No “New Music” – the section that such navigators usually follow.

I will leave YouTube Music as soon as possible

I would never in my life pay for YouTube Music as a standalone service. The only reason I use it is that it comes bundled with Youtube Premium and I don’t have to pay for it separately.

Considering that Apple seems to be finally changing its media services in Russia, I will soon have to think about leaving the Russian region in the App Store, although I do not want to do this at all.

And then I returned to home harborand YouTube Music will forget how bad dream.

Am I surprised the service was so bad? Not really.

For Google, it exists as a consolation prize for its already astronomically expensive YouTube Premium ($13/month in most countries!)and the company’s attitude towards its development and “finishing”.

What do you say? It’s clear with Russian music, there are plenty of our services, many of them high-quality. Where do you listen to foreign TOPs?