I always prefer YouTube Music over Spotify when it comes to value for money because the former comes bundled with a standard YouTube Premium subscription.
I recently returned to Spotify again because of its ability to include or exclude individual songs from taste profiles, but YouTube Music is still my primary music streaming platform.
It’s exactly the opposite for my partner. She uses both, but Spotify is her favorite music streaming platform. She has her reason, just like I have mine.
I love that we have different tastes in this case. It gives me the freedom to stop paying for Spotify whenever I want, and not miss all the new features it adds to the platform.
It recently gave me one more reason to celebrate the difference. I saw my partner accessing her saved playlists on Spotify, and it made me notice a serious flaw in YouTube Music.
It’s something that will cause more problems in the future than it does now, unless Google fixes it.
YouTube Music has an accessibility problem hiding in plain sight
I love YouTube Music’s playlists more than those on Spotify.
But noticing my partner using Spotify made me realize that accessing them from YouTube Music’s library would be a nightmare.
Instead of scrolling through the content in her Spotify library, she used the visible scrollbar to make large jumps and get straight to the songs she wanted to play.
If my YouTube Music library were the same size as hers, it would’ve taken way more time for me to find and play the song because it doesn’t have a draggable scrollbar, unlike Spotify.
I remember using it on Spotify when it was my main music streaming app, but I took it for granted. That is, until I got a reality check from my partner.
I didn’t notice that YouTube Music didn’t have a draggable scrollbar before. I never needed one. Blame my small library on YouTube Music.
YouTube Music does have a scrollbar on the right side, but you can’t drag it for fast navigation. Its visibility isn’t great, either. Spotify has none of these issues.
While this doesn’t impact me now, I won’t be able to unsee it when I need to get to the bottom of a large library on YouTube Music.
YouTube Music still gets plenty right
Even the sun has its spots, and so does YouTube Music. But that doesn’t make it easy to replace.
YouTube Music shines bright in areas that most users wouldn’t want to compromise on.
I haven’t done an extensive comparison, but to me, the recommendation engine on YouTube Music feels better than that on Spotify.
I also love using the “Start Radio” feature. I use it regularly at the gym, and YouTube Music never disappoints me.
I play my favorite Rock music, select the Radio option, and YouTube Music plays the rest of the songs based on that. It never got it wrong.
Its vast library is another plus. I can find pretty much everything here. It’s also home to many fan-made remixes that you wouldn’t find anywhere else.
I also love YouTube Music’s quick mood selectors on the home page. The app will quickly bring you the songs based on the filter you selected.
Another major advantage it has over other music streaming platforms is the YouTube integration. Although optional, it recommends songs based on your music preferences and viewing history on YouTube.
Overall, YouTube Music does many things right. But I’m not sure if that alone will be enough.
This is the first time I questioned sticking with YouTube Music
I’ve been using YouTube Premium for years, but before I started paying for it, I was a Spotify Premium user. It was my favorite music streaming platform even until a few months ago.
I started using YouTube Music out of curiosity, and I have never looked back since then.
However, I’m more skeptical than ever about my loyalty to YouTube Music because of the missing scrollbar.
It doesn’t impact me that much right now because I have a relatively small library and playlist on YouTube Music.
This will certainly change, and they’ll only grow bigger by accumulating more songs.
This makes me wonder how I will quickly find a song that’s buried under a giant playlist. The only plausible way would be to type the name of the track in the search bar.
It’s a far quicker way of finding the song if you can remember the name. If not, scrolling to the bottom is the only option. It’s a huge letdown, but more importantly, it wastes my time.
If it continues to be that way, I’ll either have to prevent my saved playlists from growing beyond a point or consider switching to Spotify.
The latter is more likely to happen if Google doesn’t fix this.