5 Spotify Features You Won't Find On YouTube Music

Streaming music service is a huge business these days, raking in $49.5 billion as of 2025 and expected to top $100 billion by the end of the decade. The good news is that, just like the types of music we all listen to, the places we can stream our music is equally diverse with YouTube Music and Spotify leading the charge. While there are many reasons to choose YouTube Music, Spotify also has certain features that make it the better alternative in many cases.

If you want the largest-possible catalog of music to stream, nothing beats YouTube Music, but if you value features like syncing the music you're playing across devices or adding a crossfade between songs, Spotify excels in these areas. Additionally, if you have friends or family that you want to share music with or you tend to create a lot of playlists, Spotify's list of utility features far outperforms what you can do with YouTube Music. Each app has its own list of advantages and downsides, but when it comes down to the conversation of Spotify vs. YouTube Music, here are some things that the former simply does better than the latter.

Device-specific apps used to be normal, but as we added more devices to our daily routines, cross-device features and integration become more important. YouTube Music and Spotify take very different approaches to this, and Spotify has some quality-of-life features that YouTube Music could benefit greatly from.

For example, if you're playing music on YouTube Music on your desktop and move away from the computer, you can't just open the YouTube Music app on your phone to skip to the next track. It does show you what you last played or what's currently playing on another device, but tapping play starts a separate instance on your phone; it doesn't change what's happening on your computer. Similarly, skipping to the next song or forwarding to a specific part of it only affects the one you're playing on your phone, not any other device.

In contrast, Spotify runs the same instance on all your devices, so if you're playing something on your computer and switch to a different song on your phone, it syncs with your computer. This is incredibly useful when you want to swap playlists mid-game on a console or skip a song from your bed without getting on your computer.

It's easy to immerse yourself in your favorite songs when listening to a playlist you love, but a small awkward gap between tracks is enough to snap out of it. Whether it's just the tiny period of silence that makes you wonder if your earphones disconnected or an influx of external sounds suddenly bombarding your ears, being able to remove this gap is integral for many users.

YouTube Music and Spotify both support gapless playback, a feature that pre-buffers the next item in your queue before the current one ends. However, on YouTube Music, this is only available for those subscribed to Premium,  whereas it's completely free on Spotify. In addition to Gapless Playback, Spotify also has crossfade, a feature that's somehow still missing from YouTube Music. When enabled, this makes song transitions even smoother by overlapping the end of one song with the start of another, blending the audio together. In Spotify, you can even adjust the duration of crossfade, configuring the experience to fit your taste best.

Spotify is mainly a music streaming platform, but it also has many features commonly found in social media apps. A large part of Spotify is sharing your favorite music with friends, and you get numerous options for doing so. The most obvious one is how Spotify lets you see what music friends are playing in real time. You can also view what songs you and your friends listen to and compare your listening habits and favorite music using the Recently Played section. Furthermore, there are in-app chats to send messages, playlists, and songs, as well as third-party app integration with platforms like Discord and Instagram to show connections what you're listening to.

Spotify is also a better app if you want to listen to music alongside others. YouTube Music also allows shared playlists where you can add songs alongside friends, but this is much more limited than Spotify: you have to add songs manually, and you can't sync listening sessions. In Spotify, there's Blend, where the app creates a playlist and automatically adds songs that you and anyone you invite to the playlist listen to. This also shows a Taste Match detailing how your favorite genres align with others. Apart from this, there's also the Jam feature, where you can listen to music live with others. Playback is synced among all invited devices, and anyone can add, move, or change items in the queue.

Sticking to your own established playlists and listening only to your favorite artists is fine, but discovering new genres and artists using the many song suggestion features is also just as entertaining. However, with such a vast variety of songs to choose from — especially with AI music being everywhere nowadays — it's not uncommon to find an artist that you just can't stand listening to. It's easy enough skipping the specific song or even selecting the "Not Interested" option to remove similar ones from popping up, but you can't truly block an artist on YouTube Music. 

On Spotify, however, it's incredibly easy to do so. Simply tap on any artist's profile, tap the three dots above their discography, and select "Don't play this artist." Doing so stops Spotify from recommending or playing any songs from the artist. If you have songs from the artist in an existing playlist, Spotify will hide them inside the playlist and skip over them, and if you actively try playing a song from them, it'll stop you from doing so. This feature is much more difficult to properly implement in YouTube Music, as a large portion of the catalog is made up of user-submitted content. 

For those of us with different playlists for different moods, genres, and artists, managing them all can quickly get out of hand. It's certainly possible to maintain playlists on YouTube Music, but both the app and the web version are missing many features integral to making playlist organization smooth and less frustrating. For example, there's no way to add the same song to multiple playlists at once on YouTube Music. Instead, you have to go through the steps individually for each playlist. There's also no option to search for playlists when you're adding a song, which makes it even harder to navigate large numbers of playlists.

Spotify has features that make all of this much more user-friendly. When adding a song to a playlist, you can select each playlist you want to add it to, and tapping "Done" adds it to all selected playlists at once. Similarly, you can search for playlists within the add to playlist dialogue box. There's even an option to create folders to hold playlists in, and to put folders inside other folders for even better organization. 

Apart from organizing your playlists, Spotify also has some hidden features that help you quickly create new playlists without manually adding tracks. There's the dedicated AI DJ that curates a queue for your current mood, the ability to maintain a "taste profile" that remembers what songs you like and dislike, and Spotify Blend, which creates a blend of songs that you and your friends frequently listen to.