5 reasons I may not go back to Spotify after trying YouTube Music

As is the case with millions of users around the world, I’ve been a loyal Spotify subscriber for as long as I can remember. The app works well across Android and iOS, there’s a great selection of music, and features like Jam and Spotify Connect have made my listening experience much more seamless across audio devices at home. I was happy to pay for the Premium Duo plan — until it was sneakily taken away.

Spotify removed the Duo plan in India around November 2025, but as I had subscribed to it long before, I was able to continue with it, as it should be. Then came the email, one July morning this year, saying my Premium Duo plan was canceled due to an “issue” with my payment method. Nothing had changed, so it didn’t make any sense. I figured it was Spotify forcing me to upgrade to a higher-priced plan, and as it turned out, I wasn’t the only one who got the boot. Frustrated with this move, I decided to try other options.

I’ve used Apple Music and Amazon Music in the past, but never bothered with YouTube Music. With YouTube Premium offering a three-month trial that also included YouTube Music Premium, I had nothing to lose. It’s only been a few weeks, but there’s a lot I like already.

It’s hard to shake off muscle memory so quickly after years of using the same thing, but the YouTube Music app is growing on me. Spotify prides itself on AI recommendations and ease of music discoverability, but those features never really influenced what I listened to, so I don’t really miss them. YouTube Music offers good recommendations, too.

What I love about YouTube Music’s homepage is the ‘mood’ row right on the top, for filtering music. Depending on what I’m doing — whether at the gym, commuting, or just lazing at home. I can simply tap the mood bubble, and it’ll filter only the songs from various genres that match the mood. Very neat!

I also like the idea of the Samples tab, which lets you scroll through song clips. The exhaustive segmentation of music on the Home tab based on my likes, community picks, and custom mixes is equally great.

Another neat little detail I discovered is that you can share a song from a specific timestamp of your choosing, if needed. It’s a small but thoughtful addition for when you want to share a particular moment in the track that might be meaningful to someone or to both of you.

If you consume YouTube content on a daily basis, YouTube Premium is absolutely worth it. So far, I didn’t mind suffering through the ads on YouTube, but after going ad-free, there’s no going back. This would never have happened had I not ditched Spotify for YouTube Music and discovered that YouTube Premium costs only a bit more and includes both services.

In the US, nearly all YouTube Music plans are cheaper than Spotify, but opting for the YouTube Premium bundle raises the monthly price by only a few dollars. The price difference is similar in India too, and is worth it when you consider you’re getting ad-free music and YouTube videos. Plus, YouTube Premium has a two-person plan that I can switch to later, which was one of the original reasons for looking for a Spotify alternative.

Spotify can switch to the music video for the song being played, but it’s still limited and not as extensive as what YouTube Music offers. This isn’t a feature I used often on Spotify, but I’m finding myself using this a lot more in YouTube Music.

Instead of mindlessly scrolling through social apps while listening to music during a commute, I’m finding myself rediscovering old music videos and live performances, like Queen’s iconic Live Aid performance or listening to a two-hour live concert of U2’s Joshua Tree Tour. YouTube Music is also home to a ton of unofficial song mixes and mashups that I’m eager to explore, and these aren’t available on Spotify.

The YouTube Music app lets you easily cast music videos to the Google TV Streamer, a trick that’s not supported on Spotify. With the latter app, you can only cast the audio of the music video to the TV Streamer, but not the video.

I think this is another feather in YouTube Music’s cap if you have a semi-decent Google ecosystem at home. I would assume this would work just as well with any modern TV built on the Google TV platform.

YouTube Music lets you post comments on each song, just like on YouTube, and reading them is a fun way to pass the time. It basically instills a sense of community, knowing that certain songs have had a similar effect on others as they have on you, or how they have helped people get through difficult times in their lives.

I was just happy to find recent comments on what I assumed were long-forgotten classics from Zero 7 and Ocean Lab. It’s reassuring to know that these gems are still being appreciated decades later, and haven’t been completely lost to time.

As much as I’m enjoying the YouTube Music experience so far, I cannot ignore the absence of some quality-of-life features. The biggest for me is the inability to cast music directly to Amazon and Sonos speakers. I have an Amazon Echo and a Sonos in my living room, and with Spotify, I can transfer music streaming from my phone to either of them with just a few taps. Unfortunately, YouTube Music doesn’t support casting to either, which is a real bummer. I could use YouTube Music via the Sonos app, but the interface is terrible.

Another Spotify feature that I miss is Jam. This lets other users queue songs to a shared playlist, and it’s something that I’ve used a lot on road trips. This isn’t a deal-breaker for me, but it’s definitely a nice-to-have feature that I miss on YouTube Music.

I’m not giving up on YouTube Music just yet as I intend to at least ride out the three-month trial period. Spotify does offer higher quality audio streaming than YouTube Music, but honestly, I’ve not been able to tell the difference. For casual use when driving or at the gym, YouTube Music sounds just fine through my car’s speakers or a pair of mid-range TWS earphones.

Having said that, Google needs to fix a number of things with YouTube Music if it hopes to catch up to Spotify. Things like better segmentation of podcasts from music and higher-quality audio should have been integrated by now, but they aren’t.

Whether I continue to use YouTube Music or not remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure — I’m not letting go of YouTube Premium.