Will we finally get background play in the US?
Paying for Premium YouTube Music is the easiest way to get the best experience out of Google’s service, but if you can’t afford it, the ad-supported version happens to be pretty okay. If you’re willing to cope with ads and a few other shortcomings, like no background play, you can still jam out to the app’s diverse library of music. But with the free version facing stiff competition from ad-supported tiers of apps like Spotify, Google seems to be thinking about how to sweeten the pot, and wants to hear from you about making YouTube Music just a little better for non-paying users.
The official Team YouTube account on Twitter has posted a poll where it asks users what feature they would like to see make its way to the ad-supported tier. Right now, there are four options: background play, a sleep timer, improvements to lyrics, and improvements to recommendations. As you probably can imagine, background play is, at the moment, the highest voted option in the list — no surprise, given how frequently that’s criticized by non-Premium listeners. While lucky ad-supported users in Canada have had access since last year, we’ve so far yet to see it spread to the States.
Background play, and these other paywalled features, are strong incentives for people to consider paying for Premium over staying on the ad-supported tier. Considering how the YouTube Music app can sometimes feel like an afterthought for free users, it’s good to see Google actually putting some care into making the non-paid experience just a little more bearable.
Even if the Twitter poll actually leads to a meaningful change, we’re sure that there will still be plenty of reasons to splurge on the paid version — things will just get a little better, even when you don’t.
