With more than 80 million users, YouTube Music is on par with companies like Apple Music and Spotify. Although people barely talk about the platform, YouTube’s music streaming service is chock-full of fantastic features like radio stations and playlists. These two features may be somewhat similar, but there are a couple of differences that will make you prefer one over the other.
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YouTube Music Radio Stations vs Playlists: Similarities
At first sight, you will not notice the difference between YouTube Music’s playlists and radio stations, since they look the same. The term “Playlist” appears beneath the former’s title, whereas the word “Radio” is placed at the end of the latter.
Additionally, radio stations and playlists are slightly connected in that you can start a radio station from a playlist and create a playlist from a radio station.
YouTube Music’s radio stations and playlists let you do the following:
- Find out more about the artists covered.
- Look through an artist’s album.
- Queue specific tracks.
- Save other’s radio stations or playlists to your library.
- Download the radio station or playlist to enjoy offline.
- Share radio stations and playlists with friends and followers on social media platforms.
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YouTube Music Playlists vs Radio Stations: Differences
Playlists Can Be Public or Private
Like other streaming services, you can make YouTube Music playlists public or private. You can only stream them if they are set to private. However, if you set them to the public, others can discover and stream your playlists on YouTube Music. It all comes down to personal preference.
You may like to keep your playlists private when you’re still creating them and just make them public as soon as you’re satisfied. But, your playlists do not have to be flawless before you set them to the public, as you can always update them later.
On the other side, radio stations are not public. And although you can share them with family and friends, you cannot share them with the world through the YouTube Music app.
Radio Stations Are Simpler to Make
It’s far simpler to make radio stations than it’s to make YouTube Music Playlists as the YouTube algorithm curates stations automatically according to the music you’re listening to. For playlists, you can just get suggestions at the bottom of the playlist.
The same goes for custom radio stations on YouTube Music. Even though you make a custom radio station from scratch, it simply takes a few clicks or taps to finish the process after picking the artists whose songs you would like to include. YouTube automatically populates radio stations with songs from the artists of your choice, while you need to manually add songs to your playlists.
As a result, radio stations are an excellent option for discovering new music from your preferred artists. However, playlists are ideal if you wish to store songs you already know or have a list of tracks for a specific mood or activity.
Radio Stations Are Automatically Updated
Playlists need your input from beginning to end. As mentioned before, you can edit or update them at any moment. If you do not, they will keep the same.
Radio stations, on the other hand, are continuously updated through the YouTube Music algorithm, thus you have different things to stream. All you have to do is set the tone by choosing the artist, and then the algorithm will do it. It makes things more interesting and recommends new music to you, for example, how traditional radio stations work.
Radio Stations Are Automatically Named
Neither custom radio stations nor those created by the YouTube Music algorithm have unique names, and they are named after the artists who inspired them. Also, you cannot rename a radio station after it has been created.
Playlists don’t look like this. You have to add a title when you create them and before you continue adding songs. Similarly, you can change the name of the playlists at any time.
YouTube Music’s radio stations and playlists work similarly to other music streaming services. If you’re comparing YouTube Music, Apple Music, Spotify, playlists and radio stations shouldn’t have a huge impact on your final decision.
Conclusion
After learning the comparison of YouTube Music playlists vs radio stations, you can choose to listen to them on YouTube Music based on what you are in the mood for or what you have time for.
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Jocelin is keeping a strong passion for the multimedia industry with her first thoughts and visions. While continuously absorbing relevant knowledge, she believes that pictures, videos, and music can bring so much pleasure to life. To go deeper into the industry, she has acquired many skills in video editing. Also, she can provide readers with ways to solve problems on image, video, and auido topics.