YouTube Music reviews
What users love and hate · 500 reviews analyzed · ★ 4.5
A music-streaming app with the world's deepest catalog (videos, live sets, rare versions included) that people keep for the library depth while constantly cursing its endless redesigns, removed features, and per-update breakage.
What users love
The deepest catalog is the main, often only, reason people stay
The fans almost always land on one thing: it has everything. Live versions, rare covers, remixes, user uploads and music videos you can't find elsewhere. For serious listeners this outweighs every other gripe.
As someone who loves live concert versions and rare covers, YouTube Music is incredible because it pulls from YouTube's massive video library.
I have yet to see one song missing from this platform.
The music video integration is unmatched. I find tracks here that aren't available anywhere else.
The bundle with YouTube Premium is genuinely convenient
People who already have YouTube Premium love that music comes bundled in — one subscription kills ads in both video and music. For many that's the very reason they left Spotify: the savings are real.
The combination of subscription with youtube feels so convenient.
Sign up for YouTube without ads and get the music app as well, the money saved on dropping Spotify because they got greedy was worthwhile.
If you have YouTube premium, you might as well download the app. It's pretty much YouTube but for music...duh
What users hate
Every update breaks something that used to work
The single most common complaint: an update lands and something dies — casting, search, queue, downloads. People literally describe a "worked fine, then they changed it, now it's broken" loop. For some, uninstalling the update is the only way to get the feature back.
Always a new app breaking issue with each update.
Casting is broken so I had to uninstall the most recent update.
Recent upgrade took away the ability to cast to my home devices.
Removed features: Explore, Related, Up Next, start-radio
Redesigns keep stripping out beloved features. The loudest losses are the Explore, Related and Up Next buttons, plus the ability to manually start a radio by artists and mood. People name exactly what they want back.
Why tf you removed the explore button???
who decided to remove related songs?!?! i want to meet that genius...completely useless!!
the "Related" and "Up Next" buttons have been removed. WHY WHY would you do this
Moving the search bar is a mass irritant
Relocating the search bar from the familiar top of the screen sparked its own wave of anger — even five-star reviewers beg for it to go back. On top of that, the search button sometimes just disappears.
You have made the user experience much worse for mobile users by removing access to the search bar from the top of the screen
please for the love of God move the search button back That's the dumbest spot ever
please put the search button back at the top right of the app where it belongs.
Playback stops on its own — even on premium and offline
The most painful technical complaint: playback randomly stops. Songs cut off mid-track, the queue empties, offline tracks go silent without internet, and the app has to be force-stopped. Premium payers are especially furious about what they're paying for.
Constantly stops playing even though I pay for the service. I didn't know they could make it worse.
While playing offline tracks , the music just stops. This is critical. The music should never stop!
bad experience, the app keeps closing when listening in the background
Downloads and offline are unreliable
Offline is a sore spot. Downloads never finish or auto-delete, a downloaded playlist loads slowly or can't be found in search, and when Wi-Fi drops the app tries to stream an already-downloaded track and stalls. Premium doesn't save you here.
The downloads dont work half the time (especially when searching for a downloaded song; it never finds it)
Auto deletes downloaded songs. Won't load downloaded songs.
the app doesnt download your entire playlist most of the time, loading DOWNLOADED playlists is slow
The algorithm has slid into AI slop and no-name covers
Recommendations, once a strength, have degraded. Mix and autoplay push AI-generated tracks and no-name covers — users are convinced it's a royalty-dodge. Shuffle replays the same 50 songs out of a 600-track playlist.
Now it will fill your list with AI slop of songs by bands you've never heard of to avoid paying higher royalties.
Constantly autoplays AI slop songs, or songs with 5-10 total plays, destroying the recommendation algorithm
getting really annoyed with YouTube trying to avoid royalties by playing no name covers of original music.
Playlist and library management is clumsy
The library is cluttered with subscriptions and auto-playlists you can't remove, while your own playlists sit at the very bottom. Songs won't delete from private playlists, won't save to Liked, and there's no manual sorting or reordering of tracks.
The library is cluttered with everyone you subscribed to, auto playlists that you can't remove, and maybe the playlists you made at the very bottom.
most of songs can not be removed form private playlists
many songs can't save to the likes playlist so I have to find them each time.
Background play is locked behind premium
Not being able to listen with the screen off without premium feels like a slap — especially since Spotify gives it for free. For many it's the deciding reason to switch to a competitor.
You get a 2 week trial or so and then HAVE TO PAY TO LISTEN TO MUSIC IN THE BACKROUND.
once it ended I couldn't play music in the background anymore and I thought it was stupid because Spotify does it for free
you can't play music background unless you subscribe to YouTube premium service. totally useless app.
An ad after every single song on free
The free tier is buried in ads — literally one after every song, plus constant premium-upsell pop-ups. The non-skippable foreign-language ads and aggressive online-gambling spots that can't be turned off are the worst offenders.
Now there is literally an ad after every song. Poor user experience. Shame on YouTube
Ads play after every song. Advertisement for Premium pops up after every ad.
It should be illegal how much you push online gambling. thats litterily the only kind of ad I get.
Billing and subscription: charged without consent, can't cancel
Serious money complaints: double charges with no refund, payment goes through but premium never activates, you can't cancel a trial or subscription, and a forced "free" trial that then bills you. This isn't bugs — it's lost trust.
I was debited twice for my premium package 😤😤And no refund made
I subscribed to premium they took my money but my yt music has not been updated to premium
your app won't allow me to cancel my subscription
Podcasts are broken: feeds don't update
After Google Podcasts shut down, people moved here and deeply regret it. Podcast feeds don't fetch new episodes for weeks, playback jumps around the episode, the queue falls apart, and podcast search is helpless. Many end up hunting for another app.
now since a week, it doesn't fetch new podcast episodes. I need to find a different app.
Playback jumps around all over the place, missing important parts of the podcast. New episodes don't even show up.
podcasts episodes are never up to date. I can see new episodes on Spotify, and they don't show up in YT Music
Doesn't remember where you left off
The app loses your listening context: instead of resuming where you stopped, it launches a random song or jumps back to a search from a week ago. History doesn't even show the tracks you actually played.
every time i shut if off and turn it back on few hours later, instead of continuing where i left off, it goes to a song i don't eveb have liked.
Every day it resumes a song from a search I did over a week ago, as opposed to the playlist I had left it on yesterday.
my favorite part is how it doesnt show you the songs you actually listened to in your history.
Casting to speakers and TVs constantly breaks
The Google-flagship paradox: the app can't see its own Google Home, Nest and Chromecast devices. Casting breaks especially after updates, while other services and YouTube TV cast fine. For home-speaker users this is a dealbreaker.
With the most recent update I can't connect/stream YouTube Music to my Google Home Speaker Group anymore.
No longer sees my Wi-Fi Chromecast speaker!!! 😤😤😤
this is a Google flagship app and yet it refuses to acknowledge a Google Nest speaker when casting audio, whereas many 3rd party apps cast without a problem.
No light theme, equalizer, or volume normalization
Basics that competitors have had for years are simply missing: a light theme (dark-only), an equalizer, volume normalization, crossfade, mono/stereo choice. The sudden volume jumps between tracks are a pain of their own.
Please add an official light mode theme option to YouTube Music for users who prefer a bright interface.
Please add volume normalisation..it's really bad at the moment..a sudden burst in volume is a nightmare for any loyal listener..
my best but we need crossfade for better experience pleas
AI features feel forced and irritating
Users didn't ask for AI and want it gone. The AI DJ with its gushing generated monologues is grating enough that decade-long subscribers threaten to quit, and there's no way to leave the beta. The vibe: AI gets shoved in instead of fixing what's broken.
AI does not belong in this youtube music
hate the AI DJ - how can I leave beta? Seriously, I pay for the app because I enjoy the music, not to listen to people talk, much less fake people
make things work before you launch the stupid AI s****
Endless crashes and freezing
Stability is shaky: a black screen instead of the UI, crashes when switching between apps, freezes when changing playlists, complaints about excessive CPU use. Even on new Pixels people regularly clear cache and force-stop just to keep it usable.
switching from one playlist to another borks the entire app to the point that nothing loads
today the app will play a few songs and then completely crash. app goes black and I have to force quit.
This garbage of an app continuously crashes, doesn't save what you're listening to