YouTube Music is Google's new Spotify rival and it's live in the UK now

published 18 June 2018

YouTube Music and YouTube Premium are live in the UK… Now. YouTube Music is now available in 17 in total, as announced earlier this month.

There are more complicated ways of putting it but YouTube Music is a Spotify rival and YouTube Premium is a Netflix rival, that also includes access to YouTube Music.

Music videos are included in YouTube Music but it's primarily an audio-only streaming service with "singles, remixes, live performances, covers and hard-to-find music you can only get on YouTube," as well as, "the full album catalogue of The Beatles!"

Spotify-esquely, you can have an ad-supported version of YouTube Music for nothing, or pay £9.99 per month for an ad-free version dubbed YouTube Music Premium. Crucially for many people, this allows you to hear tunes without the app being kept open and visible on your mobile, as well as the ability to download tunes and playlists for offline listening.

There's also the option of a £14.99 Family Plan, allowing multiple users access to the service. They don't have to be blood relatives.

YouTube Premium gives you the Music Premium package plus access to YouTube Originals TV and films, including "the hit series Cobra Kai, Impulse, F2 Finding Football and The Sidemen Show." All the classics, then.

At £11.99 per month, you can think of it as paying the usual £9.99 for the music streaming service, as well as getting a load of TV and movies that may well get more alluring over time, for just £2 per month extra. A Family Plan is also on offer here, for £17.99 per month. Arguably the biggest benefit of YouTube Premium so far is that it also removes adverts from all the videos you watch, saving valuable seconds when you'd really rather not be watching a Yo Daddy commercial.

Both YouTube Music Premium and YouTube Premium are available on a free, three-month, one-user trial.

Recommendations will be offered based on what you’ve played before, as well as location-based suggestion. As Google cringingly puts it, "At the gym workin’ on that fitness? Escaping during your commute? The right music is right here, built just for you."

So there are workout playlists and drive-time playlists, basically.

There are also thousands of pre-built playlists based on genre, mood and activity. "Try Young x Dazed if you’re feeling dark, synthy pop or #LoveNewMusic for the latest big hits."

Voice search lets you find songs in the style of someone humming in a record shop. So you can request everything from “zig a zig ah” – for hip, new up and comers, the Spice Girls or ask for “that George Michael song with the models.” No, we don't get that one either.

A dedicated Hotlist screen has the hottest new videos, as you'd expect from YouTube, with today's fare including IAMDDB, George Ezra and Nao.

Interestingly, users of the existing Google Play Music service will automatically gain access to YouTube Music Premium as well. For now, Google Play Music will carry on as always, alongside YouTube Music.

• All you need to know about YouTube Premium

• …And also YouTube Music

• The landing page for YouTube Premium

Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years.

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."