This One Spotify Feature Forced Me to Ditch YouTube Music

Being able to control music playing on one device from another is an extremely underrated feature. YouTube Music doesn’t have it—and that’s forced me to switch to Spotify.

What Is Spotify Connect?

Introduced in 2013, Spotify Connect allows you to use one device to remotely control your music on another. All that’s required is that both devices have the Spotify app installed, the same account logged in, and are on the same Wi-Fi network.

This means you can control music playing on your PC via your phone or smartwatch. In addition to seek, volume, and track controls, you can even change entire playlists or individual songs. The control is also bi-directional, meaning you can change music playing on your phone from your PC and vice versa.

Spotify Connect uses Wi-Fi to communicate between devices, making the connection faster and more stable. It also doesn’t have the pairing hiccups that come with Bluetooth. Additionally, since the music streams from the cloud to the device, there’s minimal impact on audio quality or your device’s battery life.

The feature also works with a host of devices, including but not limited to smart speakers, smart displays and TVs, wireless speakers, desktop apps, wearables, Apple Airplay or Android Carplay, and other smart home devices. Basically, if your device has a Spotify app and can connect to Wi-Fi, you can control it via Spotify Connect.

Using it is also rather simple. Since there’s no pairing or connection, as long as a device running Spotify is logged into your account and connected to the same Wi-Fi network, you should see all compatible devices appear in the device list by tapping the Connect to a device button in the bottom-right of your screen.

Similarly, in the Spotify app, you can find the Connect to device option at the bottom of the screen, in the currently playing information.

Why I Love Spotify Connect

Several practical uses for Spotify Connect have worked into my daily schedule. For example, when I come home and ask my Google Nest Mini to play music, it picks up where I left off when listening to music in my headphones. It’s a small touch, but it gets the music going without you having to find and play the track for continuity manually.

I often play games with music playing in the background and switching between the game and Spotify isn’t always possible if I want to change tracks. Spotify Connect allows me to access my entire playlist, change tracks, and more without minimizing my game.

Spotify Connect can also provide another layer of control over your smart speakers. If you’ve got multiple smart speakers sitting in different rooms in your house, you can select and play different music streams on different speakers from one device, be it your PC, phone, smartwatch, or any other compatible device.

Why YouTube Music Lags Behind

To be clear, there are other reasons why the YouTube Music app lags behind Spotify on both PC and mobile. There isn’t an official app for desktops, which is an immediate downside. However, you can try this third-party app instead of the YouTube Music website, which offers features like Stream Deck and dedicated media key support.

YouTube Music does have a cross-play queue syncing feature, but it only works when switching from mobile to PC. It also only remembers which song you were listening to in a playlist or album. Depending on your region, you might not have received this feature yet, and it’s limited to Premium subscribers.

Spotify, on the other hand, offers the Spotify Connect feature in its free tier (which is saying something, considering it won’t even let you reorder your own playlists). Unlike YouTube Music, it’s bidirectional, and your music picks off exactly where you left it instead of the track starting over. Whether Spotify is better than YouTube Music is a decision you will have to take based on your preferences.