5 Spotify Features You Won’t Find on YouTube Music

Streaming music services are now a huge business, bringing in $49.5 billion by 2025 and expected to surpass $100 billion by the end of the decade. The good news is that just like the types of music we all listen to, the places we can stream our music are just as diverse, with YouTube Music and Spotify leading the way. While there are many reasons to choose YouTube Music, Spotify also has some features that make it the better alternative in many cases.

If you want to stream the largest catalog of music possible, nothing beats YouTube Music, but if you value features like syncing the music you listen to across multiple devices or adding a crossfade between songs, Spotify excels in these areas. Plus, if you have friends or family you want to share music with or tend to create lots of playlists, Spotify’s list of utility features far surpasses what you can do with YouTube Music. Each app has its own list of pros and cons, but when it comes to the conversation between Spotify and YouTube Music, here are some things that the former simply does better than the latter.

Device-specific apps used to be normal, but as we add more devices to our daily routines, cross-device functionality and integration becomes more important. YouTube Music and Spotify take very different approaches to this, and Spotify has some quality-of-life features that YouTube Music could greatly benefit from.

For example, if you’re listening to music on YouTube Music on your desktop and move away from the computer, you can’t just open the YouTube Music app on your phone to skip to the next track. It shows you what you last played or what’s currently playing on another device, but pressing Play starts a separate instance on your phone; It doesn’t change what’s happening on your computer. Likewise, skipping to the next song or skipping to a specific part of it only affects the one you’re listening to on your phone, not any other device.

In contrast, Spotify runs the same instance on all your devices, so if you listen to something on your computer and switch to another song on your phone, it syncs with your computer. This is incredibly useful when you want to swap playlists mid-game on a console or skip a song from your bed without accessing your computer.

It’s easy to immerse yourself in your favorite songs while listening to a playlist you love, but it only takes a small, awkward gap between tracks to throw you off. Whether it’s just the small period of silence that makes you wonder if your headphones are disconnected or an influx of external sounds suddenly bombarding your ears, being able to remove that space is integral for many users.

Both YouTube Music and Spotify support gapless playback, a feature that buffers the next item in your queue before the current item finishes. However, on YouTube Music this is only available to Premium subscribers, while it’s completely free on Spotify. In addition to gapless playback, Spotify also offers crossfading, a feature that YouTube Music still lacks. When enabled, this makes song transitions even smoother by overlaying the end of one song with the start of another, thereby blending the audio. In Spotify, you can even adjust the duration of the crossfade, configuring the experience to your tastes.

Spotify is primarily a music streaming platform, but it also has many features commonly found in social media apps. A big part of Spotify is sharing your favorite music with friends, and you have plenty of options for doing that. The most obvious is how Spotify lets you see the music your friends are listening to in real time. You can also see the songs you and your friends listen to and compare your listening habits and favorite music using the Recently Played section. Additionally, there are in-app chats for messaging, playlists, and songs, as well as third-party app integration with platforms like Discord and Instagram to show connections what you’re listening to.

Spotify is also a better app if you want to listen to music with others. YouTube Music also allows shared playlists where you can add songs with friends, but it’s much more limited than Spotify: you have to add songs manually and you can’t sync listening sessions. In Spotify there is Blend, where the app creates a playlist and automatically adds songs that you and anyone you invite to the playlist listen to. This also shows a Taste Match detailing how your favorite genres align with others. Apart from this, there is also the Jam feature, which allows you to listen to live music with other people. Playback is synchronized across all guest devices and anyone can add, move or edit items in the queue.

Sticking to your own established playlists and listening to only your favorite artists is great, but discovering new genres and artists using the many song suggestion features is also just as entertaining. However, with such a variety of songs to choose from – especially with ubiquitous AI music these days – it’s not uncommon to find an artist that you just can’t stand to listen to. It’s easy enough to skip a specific song or even select the “Not interested” option to remove similar songs, but you can’t actually block an artist on YouTube Music.

On Spotify, however, it’s incredibly simple to do. Simply tap on any artist’s profile, tap the three dots above their discography, and select “Don’t play this artist.” This prevents Spotify from recommending or playing songs by the artist. If you have songs by the artist in an existing playlist, Spotify will hide them from the playlist and ignore them, and if you’re actively trying to play a song from it, it will prevent you from doing so. This feature is much more difficult to implement correctly in YouTube Music, because much of the catalog is user-submitted content.

For those of us who have different playlists for different moods, genres, and artists, managing them all can quickly get out of hand. It’s certainly possible to manage playlists on YouTube Music, but the app and web version lack many essential features to make organizing playlists smooth and less frustrating. For example, it is not possible to add the same song to multiple playlists at once on YouTube Music. Instead, you must follow the steps individually for each playlist. There’s also no option to search for playlists when you add a song, making it even more difficult to navigate through a large number of playlists.

Spotify has features that make it all much more user-friendly. When you add a song to a playlist, you can select each playlist you want to add it to, and tapping “Done” adds it to all selected playlists at once. Likewise, you can search for playlists in the Add to Playlist dialog box. There’s even an option to create folders to hold playlists and place folders inside other folders for even better organization.

Besides organizing your playlists, Spotify also has hidden features that help you quickly create new playlists without manually adding tracks. There’s the dedicated DJ AI which curates a queue based on your current mood, the ability to maintain a “taste profile” which remembers songs you like and dislike, and Spotify Blend, which creates a mix of songs you and your friends listen to frequently.