How to get YouTube Music's best audio quality
Article excerpt
If you don't mind using more data, make these changes to step up your listening experience in the YouTube Music app.
YouTube Music doesn't offer the best sound quality, even for Premium subscribers. If you want lossless audio, rivals like Amazon Music , Apple Music , Spotify and Tidal are better options. But it still has its advantages, including unofficial uploads, live performances, remixes and rare tracks. Regardless of your reasons, you can make YouTube Music sound better than its default settings. Here's how.
By default, YouTube Music uses the Normal bitrate setting, which maxes out at 128 kbps. That's fine for conserving data, but not for a high-quality listening experience. The service's highest available setting is 256 kbps, which can sound noticeably cleaner, especially with good headphones or speakers . The tradeoff is that it uses more data, so it makes the most sense with a strong connection and a decent data plan.
The streaming settings are in slightly different places on Android and iOS. Beyond that, the options are identical.
While you're at it, you can also change the bitrate for downloaded music:
There's one caveat for downloaded music: It doesn't automatically upgrade the tracks you've already downloaded. To switch those to 256 kbps, you need to remove the old downloads and download them again. (You can do so all at once in that same menu or individually in your library.)