Clues about YouTube's Music Pass streaming service found in Android app

Details of YouTube's Music Pass streaming service leak out
Like this, but more music-y

We reckon YouTube might be gearing up for a big announcement, as evidence of a music streaming service continues to mount.

Android Police has torn open the APK of the latest version of the Android app and found a number of pretty explicit clues that YouTube has a service named Music Pass in the works.

Not only was there a name, but some helpful clues as to what features are in store. For one thing, it mentions "Offline playback: take your music everywhere".

If the info is to be believed, Music Pass will also offer "Background listening" to let you keep rocking when using other apps.

Music to our ears

If that wasn't promising enough, the APK also mentions "Uninterrupted music" with "No ads on millions of songs", though this will only come with the paid service.

Talk of YouTube moving into music streaming started some time ago when rumours of a Spotify-style service began to swirl. Right now there's no indicator of how much YouTube might be charging for Music Pass.

YouTube also recently announced that it will be letting users cache videos and watch them offline for up to 48 hours. There was more evidence of this in the APK teardown, suggesting that we'll be able to cache entire playlists offline.

Hugh Langley

Hugh Langley is the ex-News Editor of TechRadar. He had written for many magazines and websites including Business Insider, The Telegraph, IGN, Gizmodo, Entrepreneur Magazine, WIRED (UK), TrustedReviews, Business Insider Australia, Business Insider India, Business Insider Singapore, Wareable, The Ambient and more.


Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider covering Google and Alphabet, and has the unfortunate distinction of accidentally linking the TechRadar homepage to a rival publication.