YouTube Music

YouTube offers offline mode, background listening and a free YouTube Red trial with new app.

YouTube is trying to capitalise on its position as the world's most popular music streaming service with a standalone app.

YouTube has just launched YouTube Music - a standalone app dedicated to music streaming and recommendation.

Obviously, YouTube is primarily a video site - but it's also the world's most-used music streaming service, far surpassing purpose-built apps like Spotify and Apple Music in popularity.

The launch of YouTube Music will give the millions of people who listen to music on YouTube every day a better experience.

It seems a little odd that YouTube Music will be competing with Google Play Music, created by YouTube's parent company. But it's a smart move considering YouTube's ubiquity.

YouTube Music has all the same tracks as its competitors, and users can listen to whole albums and single songs like anywhere else.

However, YouTube is really pushing the new app's recommendation service - any song, music video or artist starts a non-stop playlist that will play similar tracks. Users can also choose to switch the music video off, in case they want to save their battery or data.

And a Home tab at the top of the app will take note of what you listen to and constantly update with recommended tracks.

There's also 'Trending' and 'On the Rise' tabs that track what everyone else is listening to, and a Top 40 chart.

Most importantly for YouTube, it's going to be an important place to sell subscriptions to YouTube Red - YouTube's new paid-for service that eliminates ads and gives a bigger cut of revenue to video creators.

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It seems like I get the 30 second youtube ad everytime I watch a video. I try to avoid youtube as much as I can.