Nine YouTube Music Features You Should Be Using

While it may not have the high profile of Spotify or Apple Music, YouTube Music has its own band of loyal users—not least because of the wealth of audio material you can find across YouTube as well as the designated YouTube Music library. The service integrates neatly with other Google services of course, and is available across a multitude of devices.

Despite the rather functional and basic appearance of the YouTube Music apps, there’s plenty going on behind the scenes, from the option to upload your own MP3s to your library, to the opportunity to collaborate on playlists with other people.

Add videos to playlists

YouTube Music gives you something you don’t get with any other music streaming service out there, which is access to the whole of YouTube, and all the music videos, rarities, and live performances that includes. Anything on YouTube can be added to a YouTube Music playlist: On YouTube on the web, for example, click the three dots by a video, then Save.

Search by hashtag

You can add hashtags to your playlists.
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Stuck for something to listen to? Try a hashtag in the search box—almost any genre or term you can think of will work. You can also add hashtags into the descriptions of your public playlists on YouTube Music, so they can be found by other people: Click or tap the pen icon on any playlist page, then type hashtags into the description box.

Turn on autoplay

YouTube Music has an autoplay feature that plays recommended tracks once your current, manually selected queue comes to an end. You can toggle the autoplay feature on and off from the queue page: Click the arrow (bottom right) on the web or tap Up next on mobile.

Upload local music files

You can upload your own music to your library.
Credit: Lifehacker

If you’ve been into digital music long enough to have a collection of MP3s stored away somewhere, you can add them to your YouTube Music library—up to 100,000 of them. On YouTube Music on the web, click your profile picture (top right) then Upload music, and pick your files. Supported audio formats include FLAC, M4A, MP3, OGG and WMA.

These uploaded files get their own section in your YouTube Music library, and you can play them in the background without ads, and download them to your devices, without a Premium subscription. If you do have a Premium subscription, you can cast them to supported smart speakers too. You can’t share these tracks with other people, however.

Play it again

If you’re listening to a song that catches your ear but you can’t get to your playlists before it finishes, it’s not difficult to dig into your YouTube Music history. On the web or in the mobile apps, click or tap your profile picture (top right), then choose History. Select anything on the list to play it again—though this will clear everything already in the queue.