08/12/2021
YouTube Music may have yet to recreate the same popularity as Google Play Music, but it is slowly gaining many of its features, including the ability to save a music queue as a playlist. The Google Play Music app stopped working last year, with the ability to purchase, download, or upload music having been removed even earlier. While the shift from Google Play Music to YouTube Music as the default music player on Android was expected, the transition took a major step when the tech giant began instructing smartphone companies to preload YouTube Music on all Android 9 Pie and newer devices.
Google now requires every Android device with Google Mobile Services (GMS) to come pre-installed with YouTube Music. Like most other music streaming services, it offers a variety of automatically curated playlists —Mix(es)— based on the user's music consumption, and also allows for the creation of custom playlists. In addition, YouTube Music includes the ability to play music endlessly by automatically adding similar songs to the queue. This music queue can be accessed on the same screen as the music playback controls under the header, "Up Next." In this section, users can rearrange the music in the queue or play any song in the list by simply tapping on it. While the feature can be compared with the radio on Apple Music or Spotify, it truly mimics auto-play on YouTube.