After an announcement last week, the new YouTube Music is beginning to roll out. With a focus on personalized recommendations and a vast library, there are revamped Android and iOS apps, as well as a new desktop client.
On the mobile front, the new YouTube Music should be familiar to existing users with a three tab bottom bar: Home, renamed Hotlist, and Library. The home screen will update with a list of recommendations throughout the day based on location, time, and previous listening history.
Joining the millions of official versions of songs are thousands of playlists, as well as artist radio and YouTube’s vast collection of remixes, live performances, covers, and music videos. Another feature is Smart search with Google Assistant-like functionality that allows users to search with filters and by lyrics and descriptions.
The desktop client features a dark theme, and is similar to Google Play Music on the web with playback controls at the bottom, queue to the right, and player window at the left. At the top is quick access to Home, Hotlist, Library, and Search.
In terms of pricing, there is a free tier of YouTube Music that is ad-supported. To remove ads, add background playback, and offline downloads for song-related content, Music Premium is $9.99 per month. To have those benefits apply to all of YouTube and a revamped pushed into original content — like with Red before — users can pay $11.99 for Premium.
Meanwhile, Google is reiterating that Play Music will remain:
To the Google Play Music users out there, nothing will change – you’ll still be able to access and add to all of your purchased music, uploads and playlists in Google Play Music just like always.
YouTube Music are launching starting today in the five existing Red countries: United States, Mexico, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. Users can sign-up to get access as it rolls out.
Compared to previous iteration, Google is planning a wider international availability in the coming weeks for Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
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