YouTube Music Is Bringing Free Background Listening to Canada

If you’ve ever used your telephone to take heed to music on YouTube and wished so badly that the tunes would preserve cranking when you navigate to different apps, then you know the way delighted Canadian YouTube customers will most likely be after they quickly get to expertise that actual pleasure. And hopefully, that’s an indication it’s coming for the remainder of us.

In an October 4 blog post, Google—which owns YouTube— introduced that free background listening will quickly start rolling out to Canadian customers of the YouTube Music app.

“Every new update to YouTube Music begins by listening to people, and we’ve heard you loud and clear: Keep the music playing,” Google wrote.

Available on November 3, the brand new function will allow Canadian customers to get pleasure from “radio-like listening with your screen off,” in response to the announcement, that means that any media emanating from YouTube’s Music app will preserve enjoying with out interruption, even when you use your telephone to do different issues or have the display off.

Although free background listening has lengthy been normal fare that opponents like Pandora, Spotify, and Tidal supplied to customers, up till now, solely those that subscribed to YouTube’s Premium tier may entry the function. Although it wasn’t instantly clear when listeners in different nations may anticipate to see the brand new function on their very own YouTube Music apps—Google’s weblog merely notes that customers ought to “stay tuned for additional information and expansion plans”—it’s secure to imagine that YouTube will quickly carry the function to a wider viewers within the hopes of competing with their music-focused rivals.

Although it may appear at first look like the choice to broaden entry to free background listening, YouTube Premium nonetheless has loads going for it: In addition to ad-free listening, customers may also obtain movies without spending a dime on or offline, and may also simply toggle between common audio and music movies.

The information comes a number of weeks after YouTube efficiently compelled the shutdown of a number of extremely well-liked Discord music bots, a lot to the dismay of the devoted communities of customers who had used them to energy their servers’ background playlists.