YouTube Red / YouTube Music

Remember the good old days when you could play a YouTube without getting the annoying ads?

Well those days are over! But they come at a cost…

Last month YouTube launched YouTube Red in Australia. Originally launched in the US in November 2015, Australia has caught up. We are the second region to get this service, with New Zealand closely following. One of my first thoughts when hearing about YouTube Red is: well, I guess you’ll be capturing all of the people searching for the very similarly named RedTube in Google. Props to the marketing team for that one, I think?

Everyday hundreds of millions of people watch YouTube videos all over the world, myself included, so I am excited to be doing a review on this. Who knew work could be so fun?!

Moving on…

What do you get?

  • AD FREE VIDEOS AND MUSIC!
  • YouTube original TV shows. You shouldn’t be surprised to hear PewDie Pie has made the YouTube original list with ‘Scare PewDie’ TV show. Also in the originals is Lilly Singh’s a ‘Trip to Unicorn Island’, ‘Escape the Night’, ‘Dance Camp’ and more!
  • Free Google Play Music streaming! And vise versa… If you already have paid Google Play Music, check out YouTube Red, it’s all yours!
  • Offline streaming. You have the option to download videos in advance and watch them on those long travels with (god forbid) no WiFi. There is a limit of 100 videos, or 300 hours to your offline library…
  • Official music artist content… Say what now? Yea, that would be live recordings, remixes, covers and tributes to millions of songs. This is one big differentiation to using Spotify, Apple Music and other distant competitors.
  • Background play – whoop whoop! Yes, I have been wanting this for soooo long. I don’t know how long I have been saying Gee I wish I could just listen to this damn song/video while also going on Facebook.. is it really that hard? Well wait no longer because you can turn off your screen or browse other apps, and all your videos or music will play in the background.

What don’t you get?

Though you do get ad free streaming for YouTube itself or within the YouTube apps, this subscription does not apply to paid YouTube channels, TV and movie purchases or rentals. Also, keep in mind, this subscription is not really compared to Netflix or Stan rivals, this is purely for YouTube content streaming.

How can you play it?

YouTube Red can be played on the following:

  • YouTube and YouTube Gaming Apps for Android and iPhone
  • Apple TV
  • Android TV
  • Consoles: Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, PS3 and PS4
  • Android TV
  • Chromecast
  • Roku (LT, 1, 2, 2 HD, 2 XD, 2 XS, 3, Streaming Stick, Roku TV)
  • Some smart TV’s

And if you didn’t have enough music already

Along with the launch of YouTube Red, the YouTube Music app was also launched.

The YouTube Music app was launched, you guessed it…. specifically for all things music related. There are 3 sections to this app: home / suggestions for you, whats trending, and what you’ve liked in the past for future reference.

What’s cool about this app is the super awesome, new, offline cached mix tape. This is where YouTube can automatically choose music it thinks you like (based on what you’ve liked and played in the past), and saves it as an offline playlist for you to listen to later when you don’t have internet connection.

The app works much like it’s regular YouTube app counterpart with with the same interface, colours and comes with the ad free, background playing features if you have a YouTube Red subscription.

Whats the investment?

$11.99 per month after a 30 day free trial. Maybe you may have enough subscriptions already, but YouTube Red has a tonne of unique features and offerings that your Spotify, Apple Music, and Netflix combined won’t give you.

Kim’s verdict

I’ve signed up to the free trial and can say I am enjoying my YouTube Red experience. The ad free videos, and offline mix tape is appealing to me, and it also intuitively recommends new music to my ‘upcoming playlist’ which means that I have found plenty of new beats which I will be adding to my regular music streaming service. I also like that all I have to do is hit the thumbs up button and I can find all my liked videos for a quick and easy find next time I want to listen. My only suggestion to YouTube would be to intuitively group my liked videos into artist, album, and YouTube author categories so I can find them easier, but otherwise I have no issues.

I’ll give YouTube Red a couple more weeks to decide if I want to keep it around, but so far I’m giving the service a solid 4/5 stars.

Check out the ad for YouTube Red…..

And YouTube Music….