- Coming November 3rd
By Chinua Albert Okafor @TheRoboRai
One of YouTube Music's biggest limitations is about to be lifted - but only in Canada. Beginning November 3rd, YouTube will allow its Canadian customers to listen to music in the background while working and doing other tasks on their phones.
As well as the standard free, ad-supported radio mixes, background listening will also support any content that you add to your account.
YouTube Music is offering the feature for the first time without requiring customers to subscribe to Premium. For now, YouTube is only saying that users in other countries can look forward to additional information and expansion plans.
With YouTube's competitors including Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, and Tidal, free background listening is table stakes, so this is an area where YouTube falls short. If YouTube Music Premium does away with background playback, it still has other perks: offline downloads and seamless switching between music videos and regular audio are the biggest: ad-free listening and no ads are the next best.
