Recently we have seen Google add a lot of new features to YouTube Music as they make the transition from Google Play Music to YouTube Music — albeit slowly in some cases (has anyone actually seen the library migration tool arrive in their inbox yet?). Overnight users have noticed another new addition to the improving feature-list.
The new feature added is the ability to save albums to your library before it is released. YouTube Music will now show you the full track list of an album prior to its release which you can then save or download.
At this stage the new feature is very hit and miss with not all artists and albums showing it along with it not appearing for all users just yet. Android Police used the example of searching for a new Lady Gaga album, set to be released in a couple of days — it did not show any result at all. Myself, I searched for the self-titled album from Lamb of God set to be released in a couple of weeks and got nothing as well.
Some artists are showing it on their page with “Sébastien Tellier’s “Domesticated” (coming May 29) and Neck Deep’s “All Distortions Are Intentional” (July 24)” both showing the track list of released and unreleased songs and the ability to save or download.
The new feature is apparently a server side switch with no specific app version required and is available on the YouTube Music web page as well. The pre-save feature is already available on Spotify and Apple Music so it is not surprising that YouTube Music are introducing it as well.
It is unclear when this will roll out or just how it works (ie. does the artist have to enable it?) but it seems to be available to all users already, but not available for all artists. I can see myself using this feature a lot, hopefully all artists will implement it so we can enjoy new albums the day they drop.
In the meantime we continue to wait for our library migration from Google Play Music to YouTube Music to arrive before making the final transition over.
I am still using GPM mainly because:
In YTM, I can’t add a bunch of songs/albums to the queue and then save the queue as a playlist.
YTM keeps forgetting the queue. The application can’t seem to keep the queue in its cache long enough like GPM can and is especially bad recovering the queue in the Android Auto app.
Has anyone else experienced the same and come up with workarounds?
Now this is cool, other than the fact Chromatica isn’t there yet hehe