YouTube Music 'Shuffle songs' allegedly becoming a premium paid feature

Fresh reports suggest that YouTube Music allegedly wants users to purchase a Premium subscription in order to shuffle songs.

The shuffle feature on YouTube Music is a great way to enjoy a randomized selection of new songs. However, a subset of users is unhappy as they can no longer invoke the function on the free tier.

According to reports (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8), some people are being asked to pay for the premium membership to be able to use the Shuffle button.

Allegedly, they get an ‘Upgrade to Shuffle Songs. Enjoy shuffling, songs, playlists & more with Music Premium’ message when trying to do so.

People are concerned about this prospective change since shuffling has traditionally been a free feature.

Understandably, this is bad news for those who rely on this basic function to discover new tracks or stream the ones that they like.

A user has even compared this alteration with the paid ‘Play Anything with Siri’ function in Apple Music.

They say that even if one has already paid for the Apple Music subscription, they need to make an additional payment to access this feature.

It’s like the play anything with siri feature for apple music that you have to pay extra when that should be included in the Apple Music subscription.
Source

Some suggest that those affected should copy their favorite tracks to their device and play them with VLC media player.

As of now, it appears that the company is currently A/B testing this change. And this can be confirmed by the fact that the feature works perfectly at our end even without a Premium subscription.

So, it’s possible that Google might decide to scrap this change rather than proceeding with its global implementation.

Why even use the non-premium version? It’s basically unusable when ads are playing.
Source

A user says that they don’t mind paying a small fee for the hosting services. But they cannot accept the fact that YouTube is collecting money for videos that they have not even created.

Of course, YouTube hasn’t made any official communication regarding this feature going behind a paywall, so take this information with a grain of salt.

Rest assured, we will keep tabs and let you know whenever we come across the latest developments.

Note: We have more such stories in our dedicated Google section, so be sure to follow them as well.

Featured Image: YouTube Music.

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