In April 2019, Google announced the launch of a free, ad-supported version of its YouTube Music streaming service for use with Google Home and other smart speakers that feature its voice-activated assistant.

Google Home
Essentially, the free streaming tier means that you can listen to songs from the YouTube Music catalog, interspersed with occasional ads, on your Google Home or other Google Assistant-powered speaker right out of the box.

With YouTube Music and Google Home, you can ask Google Home to play the right music for any moment or mood, and YouTube Music will play a station customized to your tastes based upon your request. So you could say, for example, "Hey Google, play music for working out," and your speaker will fill the room with some upbeat tunes.

At the time of writing, free, ad-supported YouTube Music is available on smart speakers in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Japan, Netherlands, and Austria. Google is also working to make the service available in more countries.

To enable free, ad-based YouTube Music on your smart speaker, simply follow these steps.

  1. Launch the Google Home app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device.
  2. Tap the account Settings option on the app's main Home screen.
    how to enable free youtube music on google home speaker

  3. Scroll down and tap Music.
  4. Tap YouTube Music to link the streaming service to your smart speaker and make it your default music provider.

That's all there is to it. If you have an Echo device instead of a Google Home device, you can listen to Amazon's new free music service instead just by asking Alexa to play a station based on a song, artist, era, genre, or an Amazon Music global playlist.

Top Rated Comments

iGeek2014 Avatar
81 months ago
And then find yourself spending more time listening to adverts than you do actual music....
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kis Avatar
81 months ago
And if you have a HomePod, you can listen to nothing fro free.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
davie18 Avatar
81 months ago
128kbps Youtube compressed music? No thank you!
Studies have shown most people can’t notice any different past this point. And if there is a difference it’s absolutely marginal on 99% of consumer speakers. Only on very high end ones would it be noticeable at all.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
YaBe Avatar
81 months ago
I personally like the idea, the quality is good enough to for casual listening, and offer added value to Google home, Apple should take a note for homepod and offer at least a Music lite version.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
chiguimania Avatar
81 months ago
128kbps Youtube compressed music? No thank you!
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
A MacBook lover Avatar
81 months ago
Hmm...and have my conversations spied on, shared as audio files and sent over employee chat rooms, like Amazon did? No thanks.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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