Free YouTube Music background listening rolling out

Publish date: 2022-08-29

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority

TL;DR

YouTube Music is the latest attempt by Google to compete in the streaming music business. It finally took over from the now-shuttered Google Play Music nearly a year ago. Now, it looks like Google is going to open up one of YouTube Music’s premium features for anyone to check out.

Read more: Best YouTube Music alternatives

Revealed as part of an official blog post, Google announced today that the YouTube Music background listening feature would become free to access starting on November 3. This feature is normally part of the service’s subscription tier, which costs $9.99 each month. With this feature, users can play YouTube Music videos in the background on their smartphone or tablet, or even if their screen is turned off. However, you will still need to listen to ads with this addition. Getting rid of ads will still be a part of the paid tier.

The feature will support playing music via “radio stations” that will offer a user’s favorite songs, artists, and albums. It will also support listening in the background with shuffled personalized playlists.

Sounds great, right? Not so fast. Google also announced that the YouTube Music free background listening feature will only be available in one country: Canada. That’s right. Our neighbors in the Great White North will soon be able to listen to music in the background on their mobile devices on those cold winter days and nights.

Google didn’t say when this feature might be coming to the US or other markets. The blog post did state that there are “expansion plans.” Hopefully, that means we won’t have to wait too long for this feature to be available beyond Canada.

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