Survey says YouTube Music’s popularity is soaring, but some paying readers still shun it

It’s been almost six years since Google replaced Play Music with its current streaming service, YouTube Music. Judging by the numerous polls and readers’ comments we’ve conducted and observed during this period, it’s safe to say that this was a good decision.

I still miss the Play Music days, so much so that I switched to Spotify in 2021 and haven’t looked back. However, plenty of readers still use or have adopted YouTube Music as their primary music streaming service. But just how many?

My colleague Rita El Khoury recently wrote a piece explaining why she doesn’t use YouTube Music even though she pays for YouTube Premium. It appears to have struck a nerve: the poll we ran on this article received over 7,700 votes, and many readers disagree.

So, what do the numbers say? Well, more than two in every three respondents (68.3%) in this poll use YouTube Music as their “primary music streaming service.” In fact, if you include those who use YouTube Music “sometimes,” nearly four in every five readers use Google’s music streaming service. It’s worth noting that 10.8% of respondents in this “sometimes” category use another music service as their primary.

Notably, some readers explain in the comments why they use YouTube Music, highlighting its key advantages over Spotify.

As reader Leena Meena notes:

Your concerns are true, but I mainly use YT Music because it has all the music YouTube has. For instance, any remix of a song will be harder to find on Spotify than YT Music. I’m a free user, and I like to loop songs, but unfortunately, Spotify is a bit of a money chaser, so I have to switch to YT Music.

Either way, this leaves a rather slim number of respondents who don’t use YouTube Music. Interestingly, 12.4% of respondents pay for YouTube Premium but don’t use the premium-tier Music access that comes with it. Finally, 8.5% of respondents don’t pay for it or use it, even for free.

Interestingly, while Leena Meena loves YouTube’s integration with Music, commenter Frank v. finds this a negative:

I hate that YouTube Music is so intertwined with YouTube. That’s one of the main reasons I don’t use it. I want a music app that’s just music, so I use Apple Music.

As I mentioned earlier, these results are largely consistent with what we’ve seen in the past. In a poll we ran in July 2025 asking readers what they believed was the best music streaming service, 54% of the now 18,000 respondents use YouTube Music as their primary option, with Spotify trailing at 34%.