??? Studio provided digital masters will of course be identical across all of the services.
Apple Music has the upper hand on the very high end with full lossless streaming, but that's irrelevant to almost everyone listening in a compromised situation -- like 100% of bluetooth headsets -- and YT Premium's 256Kbps AAC is extremely high quality.
You, along with many others, seem very confused about this. No one is talking about random people uploading their MP3s to YouTube the video service.
YouTube Music is a separate service. The music is provided by music labels in exactly the same way it is provided to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and others. Music labels provide digital masters and the streaming service encodes as necessary for their users.
YouTube Music definitely has just standard YouTube videos uploaded by random people. It's one of the only reasons I use YouTube Music - listening to vinyl rips of things that were never released in other formats.
When you are on YouTube there is a Music section that includes music videos, random uploads, etc. A lot of people are talking about that in this discussion and it is causing a lot of confusion.
Random rips that people upload on YouTube are not available on YouTube Music (again, not the Music section on YouTube, but the separate YouTube Music service). The only music available is through a sanctioned distributor like Amuse, and of course the labels have direct feeds to these services.
You are mistaken. User uploads, unofficial remixes, mixtapes, anime music videos, entire video game soundtrack rips, etc. All in the YouTube Music app.
To +1 the general "youtube music is youtube": every time I've given the YT music app a try, I've started listening to [what I wanted] only to end up in random youtube mixes (not YT-music-mixes of just studio-uploaded stuff, youtube videos titled "mix" or otherwise, sometimes 10h long, with accompanying looped graphics and sometimes VPN advertising segments and like-and-subscribes strewn throughout randomly) after a few songs.
YTM is YT plus music, not a separate thing. It's very clearly intentionally forced to be that way. It's the primary reason I think it's an awful service (the general UX is a very close second). It does, however, have the benefit of niche user uploads like this existing because it's YT.
I believe the links. The guy is searching for fringe stuff. You can even copy watch ids from YouTube, which is likely what was done here.
But if you are any ordinary user and you are searching on YouTube Music for a playlist and somehow you got a 10 hour random person's video, either you're spectacularly terrible at search, or you're full of shit.
Look, I can link to random stuff too. A couple of YouTube curated playlists, and some of millions of albums. All songs direct from publishers. Zero imaginary ads, or bizarre "videos".
Incorrect. All of those links are taken from the YouTube Music app on Android via search. Some are contrived, but the point is that there is a wide range of counterexamples to your assertion that YouTube Music is this siloed thing that's only music direct from publishers.
Here's a more straightforward example. I search for "action bronson blue chips 2" [1]
The top result is "Action Bronson Blue Chips 2 ((Full Album)) - Please Subscribe" from user 'Lpmixtapes compilation and mixtapes...'[2]
The official release [3] is a page scroll down.
So, I don't think it's reasonable to call people "terrible at search" when these things literally come up as top results in search and are fair game for the recommendation algo to slide into your stream, or "full of shit" when they can give you specific examples of how things you've said are wrong.
Why are you so sure that your experience is the one true YouTube Music experience, and several other people telling you they have other experiences are "making shit up"?
Having said that, having done thousands of search for countless bands, albums, and songs, and having listened to countless playlists, I have never, ever encountered an unofficial track. It has always been first-party official releases.
I guess it's that I'm not looking for stuff for which there isn't a direct licensed track. But the earlier comments about "uploaded with that quality" and talking about replacement tracks is simply wrong for the vast majority of people. You're going to be listening to the music distributors version.
I guess if you're looking for anime music or something where an official listing simply doesn't exist then it's the alternative to nothing.
I use normal YT with premium for music all day, never even felt an urge to try out "YouTube Music". What would be the value add? I already have playlists on normal YT and all my music is there.
Yeah, YTM isn't a _completely_ separate service. It's just a different frontend to YouTube. If you search for one of those "official" music label uploaded songs on youtube, you'll get the exact same video ID as you get on YTM. Conversely, if there isn't an "official" copy uploaded, you'll get joe's random 128kbps triple-encoded upload.
Apple Music has the upper hand on the very high end with full lossless streaming, but that's irrelevant to almost everyone listening in a compromised situation -- like 100% of bluetooth headsets -- and YT Premium's 256Kbps AAC is extremely high quality.