Google recently announced that it will unite YouTube Red and Google Play Music into a single service to make its strategy more cohesive, but while that does not happen, it continues to update each application individually. Finally, YouTube Red subscribers will be able to save individual songs, playlists, and albums locally to listen offline. It’s a function considered basic by many users of streaming music services, but it’s only coming to the Google service now.
To make a song available offline, simply search for it, tap options, “save to offline music,” and choose one of the three formats available for the file: audio only, Medium (360p), and HD (720p). From that first choice, the application will automatically select the same option the next time the user downloads a song (you can also change the option in the settings).
To listen to downloaded songs just go to your profile page and choose the option offline. A list of all the tracks, playlists, and albums you’ve downloaded will be displayed for you to listen to when you’re offline.
YouTube Red already allowed its users to download songs to listen without connection to the internet by the Offline Mixtape function. It automatically selects songs based on your music taste and the tracks you’ve listened to and downloads them as a bundle, which leads to users’ complaints about filling the device’s memory with unwanted music. With the new function, they will have more control over what is saved on their handsets.
The move was earlier declared by Lyor Cohen of Google and it has already been declared new customers of Play Music and YouTube Red will get 4 months free. He is the music director for YouTube, who confirmed the details at the New Music Seminar conference in New York on Wednesday, July 26. It is possible that the measure creates a brand new product under a different name. Play Music can be accessed in 64 countries while YouTube Red is limited to only 5. Merging both services also means increasing the availability of the second, also reaching 64 countries.
The idea behind the service, however, resembles that of Netflix: a place where you can stream video on demand. There, Google offers exclusive series and removes YouTube ads.
