If YouTube Music is not missing out on a basic feature you expected to have at launch, then the feature is undergoing extensive A / B testing and available only to a minority of subscribers. Even earlier today, one of the previous changes was detected: the ability to define a released track to repeat. Unfortunately, although it has been detected in nature, the feature does not really … what is the term – does it work?
The change has been detected in the YouTube Music subreddit and I can confirm that it is live on my device – for certain definitions of “live”. The change allows you to select the repeat button and scroll through the options during transmission, but it doesn’t really seem to affect anything. The person who saw the feature claims that it disconnects completely after playing it once. My own test was a little better: the selection of a single song to repeat was simply disregarded and the next song would be played. If I tried to repeat a complete playlist or album, however, there was an error and the cast would crash with the following error:
Error: Error.
The appearance of an interactive icon is almost certainly an indicator that the change is being worked on, but today’s news almost sums up the YouTube Music experience so far: if a feature isn’t missing, it’s missing for some people as part of a painfully slow implementation or it just didn’t work.
Someday, YouTube Music will be a fully featured music subscription app and service – or at least it will reach the benchmark set by Google Play Music – but that day is not today.
Perennial alternative title: YouTube Music almost has a basic feature that you expected it to launch, but it’s not yet available to everyone and / or it’s broken
