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Add to SafariWhen comparing 8 Tracks vs Youtube, the Slant community recommends Youtube for most people. In the question“What are the best music streaming services?” Youtube is ranked 12th while 8 Tracks is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose Youtube is:
Huge variety of music to pick from including rare recordings, covers, mixes, etc.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Individualistic and personalized user playlists
The site is human-curated not automated. This can give a more personal feel, as each playlist on the music streaming service has been curated by a user.
Pro Great for discovering new music
Due to how the service works, listening to user created playlists allows for pretty good discovery of new or undiscovered bands.
Pro Large catalog of music
Huge variety of music to pick from including rare recordings, covers, mixes, etc.
Pro Community created mixes and remixes
Because anybody can upload to YouTube, it has content from remixes of popular songs to hour long mixes and everything in-between. Much of this content can't be found on other music streaming services.
Pro Really good suggestions
YouTube has some of the best suggestions around. Almost all of the suggestions are similar to the song you're currently playing, and allow for an endless music streaming service.
Pro Multiple frontends available
There are Chrome extensions (UpNext, Streamus), webapps (The Parade) and even native desktop apps (Atraci) that are all powered by Youtube. They provide additional functionality and convenience on top of what Youtube already offers.
Cons
Con Poor music streaming service outside of North America
8Tracks has changed its policy for how it supplies music to those outside of North America by not using any of their servers for those users. This change resulted in using Youtube for those users in order to still have a way to add songs to playlists. Sadly using Youtube results in many songs just disappearing and many playlists becoming defunct.
Con Advertisements in free version
Con No way to find certain songs
8 Tracks allows you to search for a playlist based on keywords, then requires you to listen to most of that playlist without skipping. As such, it's not so good for hunting down a specific song, but is great for discovering new music.
Con Confusing service for music
There is a Youtube Music app, which allows one to stream music videos as well as just the studio audio versions of songs. This feature is not accessible on the Youtube website, or the regular Youtube app.
In order to get ad free service on the site as well as the music app, ones needs to subscribe to Youtube Red for $9.99 a month. This nets the user features, such as Youtube (Google) created movies and videos as well as a way to save musical playlists for offline use, but only in the Youtube Music app. This makes for a confusing and fragmented service that requires using multiple apps, a website, and a subscription to a paid service that encompasses much more than just music, in order to get the full use out of music on Youtube.
Con Lots of ads unless you buy a subscription
There are lots of ads on YouTube, even in the middle of long songs. Some of them can be skipped, however others cannot. Most of the time ads are only displayed between songs.
Con Rips artists off
YouTube pays artists $0.0007 / play, which is less than 6 times what Spotify pays ($0.0044), and Spotify itself is criticized for ripping artists off.
Con Ambient music monetization denied
YouTube doesn't allow the monetization of the ambient musical tracks.
