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 subscriptions to as many as three music streaming services, but I only use one on a regular basis.

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

Below I’ll tell you how behind YouTube Music feels compared to its competitors, 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 two 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 in Yandex Stations.

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

Earlier Apple Music was my main streaming service, but over the past three years, all new tracks from my favorite bands have stopped appearing there due to the departure of Universal, Sony and other license holders from 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 streams, only YouTube Music is configured outside of Russia, became the decisive factor. 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, how bad is the service. Compared to Apple Music and Spotify, it lacks many convenient features. And there is a feeling that Google is not worried about this.

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 turn any website into a program, and that’s the only way I can save myself. The life hack even helps me download tracks offline on my MacBook.

︎ The mobile application, even on the iPhone, is reminiscent of the web version in terms of its 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 brings huge frustration with each opening.

︎ The Library section opens recently added albums, but not individual songs.

To see individual songs added to the library, each time you open the application, go to the “Like Music” section, which is pinned at the top of the “Library” section, which cannot be undocked. Difficult to figure out? That’s what I’m talking about.

︎ When you open an application, it always launches the Home section first, not the last open tab. Considering its dynamic, frustration every time.

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

︎ No spatial audio

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

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

Recommendations are incredibly bad, which is strange for a YouTube developer

On what basis these strange songs ended up in recommendations based on my preferences is impossible to understand.

Apple Music has a magical autoplay button . It turns on tracks after the playlist you included has ended.

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

Seriously, after the feature appeared in iOS 14, I fell in love with Apple Music all over again. And I never thought about any Spotify, which was known for its high-quality 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 in the Russian one almost every song.

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

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 all seem passable.

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

Getting such bad recommendations in music is very strange because YouTube algorithms suggest new and interesting videos perfectly.

What’s even more troubling is that Google’s music service’s recommendation problem extends beyond automatic selection during playback.

Even searching for new songs manually is useless

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

Into world trends and genres Navigator I don’t usually log in, so as a last ditch attempt to listen to good music I use it from time to 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 turn on the service on iPhone and Mac at the same time, both the order of sections and their content will be different on Home – as if different accounts are connected.

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

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

The “Albums for You” section offers old albums or records that I had already listened to completely and no longer want.

There are still “Heard in Shorts” (who would even listen to this?), “From Your Library”which should be somewhat different from “you haven’t listened for a long time” and “Mixes for you”, again with songs from my library and similar to them, but always collected 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 winding down its media services in Russia, I will soon have to think about leaving the Russian region for the App Store, although I don’t want to do this at all.

And then I’ll return to home harborand YouTube Music I’ll forget how bad dream.

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

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

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?