YouTube Music update lets you cast audio to speakers without a premium subscription

YouTube is finally making one of its ‘paid’ features available for free for millions around the globe. Until now, only the premium YouTube Music subscribers were able to cast content on connected speakers around the home. However, anybody can do it now. 

As noticed by Android Police, YouTube Music now also plays well with Google Assistant. This means that the service will show the correct, personalised playlist even if you request it by name. For instance, you can give a voice command like “Hey Google, play my 'musicals at work' playlist.” While the report states that this feature works in the US, it assumes that users in Brazil and Canada might have got this as well.

Also read: YouTube is going to use AI moderation to age-restrict way more videos than it already is

This confirmation came from a user on Reddit as well. “Sorry if this has been posted about already but I just noticed that casting my uploaded music is now possible without a premium membership! It’s a small win, hopefully more of the old GPM features will slowly be added as well. Note: I’m talking iOS,” said the Redittor.

The eagle eyes users will also see new ‘Charts’ feature in the YouTube Music app that lists top charts based on artists, songs and music videos. This is said to be available in 57 countries.

And other than YouTube Music upgrades, the firm has recently introduced support for 4K videos on Apple TV 4K. Interestingly enough, Apple TV 4K has been around for quite some time, but 4K YouTube videos support was announced just this year through the tvOS 14 update. Before the update, Apple TV 4K limited video resolution to 1080p even for UHD videos.