Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
Music collecting and appreciation is a deeply personal hobby. It’s something very important to me and serves as a snapshot of time and place. Over the years, most of us of a certain vintage have built our music libraries piece by piece, from rare digital downloads and fan remixes to songs that never made it to streaming platforms. Even mixtapes if you, like me, are a 90s or earlier kid. For me, those tracks represent more than nostalgia. They’re a record of growing up online, scouring file-sharing forums for one-off singles, MySpace, and now, an ever-growing collection of vinyl records collected during my travels.
Every record I collect tells a story. A dusty Cuban jazz album I picked up in Havana, the Japanese city pop release I stumbled upon in a secondhand store in Shibuya, or the deep techno record from a small label in Berlin that went under decades ago. You catch my drift. These albums aren’t just music albums, they’re memories. And yet, when I want to go back to any of them on the go, it’s not an option. Way too many of them don’t exist anywhere in the digital domain. Not on Spotify, not on Apple Music, and all too often, not even on YouTube.
No matter how wide the promised catalog, I've made my peace that there'll always be gaps in streaming services.
The fact is, I’m on every streaming service. When streaming took over, I tried my best to move with it. Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, YouTube Music, I even had Qobuz for a while. But no matter how wide their catalogs stretched, I’ve made my peace with the fact that there will always be gaps. I’ve even tried filling that gap with PlexAmp, but that’s got its own set of issues. There’s a reason I keep coming back to YouTube Music. The answer is simple. YouTube Music’s personal upload feature might just be the most underrated part of any streaming app today. It gave me back something I thought I’d lost forever — the ability to stream my personal music library again, without losing the magic of streaming discoverability.
Do you use the personal music upload feature in YouTube Music? 29 votes Yes, it's why I signed up for YouTube Music. 24 % Yes, I use it occassionally. 17 % No, I don't need it. 14 % No, I didn't know you could upload your library to YouTube Music. 45 %
Rediscovering the joy of a personal library
Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
I’ll be honest. When I first started using YouTube Music, I wasn’t particularly impressed. Compared to Spotify’s stellar playlist curation or Apple’s polished design and lossless audio, it felt like an afterthought. To be fair, I’m still not its biggest fan. The interface leans too heavily on YouTube’s video-first DNA, and the curation can sometimes push live versions or remixes instead of the actual track. But that’s a discussion for another day.
The reason I’ve stuck with YouTube Music is its upload feature, and it changes everything. It lets you add your own MP3 or FLAC files to your personal library, up to 100,000 tracks, and access them across every device. No syncing software or convoluted procedures to upload your music. Just tap a button, select your music, and it’s there. That one feature solved years of frustration with streaming services.
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