There’s a music app that does things better than YouTube Music in the ways I care most about. It’s quicker to use, more intelligent in its suggestions and a hell of a lot more fun to live with day-to-day. Still, I’m sticking with YouTube Music. The paradox says a lot about how streaming functions in 2025: the “best” product isn’t necessarily the one you use.
Why It Feels Better As An Experience With Deezer
I’m talking about Deezer. With repeated tests, it just gets out of the way. The home screen is less cluttered with modules, and the interface employs bright color and generous white space to make decision-making feel less exhausting. It matters when you open an app scores of times a day. Whereas YouTube Music can feel like a bulletin board of everything everywhere all at once, Deezer trims the noise by getting rid of discovery.
Deezer’s Flow is the star. It’s always a personal playlist, mixing your old favorites with what Primary — and by extension you — decided to grab that week, and is there for you if you want to shift the vibe left or right in mood or genre. That added layer of control also means that wherever its picks take you, there’s less “new-music whiplash” — those sudden shifts in genre and tone you get with one-size-fits-all radios. It’s a real bummer. YouTube Music Supermix is simply good — sometimes very good, but easier to get lost in and harder to push around.
Small touches add up. Deezer’s lyrics pages load with a visual countdown so you know exactly when the karaoke moment lands. The background art has more light, the micro-animations are friendlier. You can block an individual track or ban an artist completely — a way-too-important feature that will keep your recommendations from drifting toward acts you never want to hear again.
And there’s lossless. Deezer goes up to FLAC quality at its premium tier, while YouTube Music still maxes out as a compressed stream. If you have a decent set of wired headphones or stream to a Hi-Fi setup, that difference is not theoretical — it’s audible.
Even the extras feel purposeful. Deezer’s music quizzes make for a surprisingly sticky discovery mechanic, and the artist pages show tour dates so you can act on your fandom. Both services claim catalogs over 100 million tracks, but Deezer’s curation makes that scale feel manageable.
Where YouTube Music Still Wins Against Its Rival
YouTube Music’s superpower is video. Official videos, live sessions, niche uploads — years of creator culture are baked into the platform. And if you like watching as much as listening, Deezer can’t even touch that. The Samples feed (short-form video, but make it music first) is also still a fast and effective way to trip over something new.
Podcasts are another advantage. YouTube Music plugs directly into the broader YouTube ecosystem, so descriptions, chapters and video versions of podcasts all translate over with rich metadata. Deezer does provide podcasts, but it has a much smaller library and less robust episode data, and feels more like an add-on than a pillar.
The Real Dealbreaker Is Price And Bundled Value
So why am I not switching? Money, and how bundles alter the calculus of value. Prices vary by region, but in a lot of places YouTube Premium is cheaper than its rivals once you account for everything it gives you: no ads across YouTube, background play, downloads and the ability to use YouTube Music. If you already spend hours on YouTube, the marginal cost of Music is basically a free trial.
In the US, standalone pricing is neck-and-neck — it costs around $11 monthly for both services’ individual plans, with each offering you an annual option that lops off about two monthly charges.
Family plans skew the math again: YouTube Premium’s family tier seems expensive at first blush, but when that same bundle removes ads across the entire platform for each person in a household the perceived value increases.
The free tiers also matter. YouTube Music also makes the ad-supported option more limited for mobile (no background play for music), but offers a serviceable safety net during those months you take time off from a subscription. Deezer’s free tier is available in the US, but not consistently elsewhere, so some people are choosing between paying full freight or losing access altogether. And if you flip back and forth between premium and not based on the season or your travel schedule, those gaps are big.
What the Data Tells Us About Listening Habits Today
Listener behavior helps explain why “good enough plus bundle” often beats “best in class.” A year-end report from Luminate clocked over 1.2 trillion on-demand audio streams occurring in the US in 2023, with a growing piece of that pie steering playlists and algorithmic feeds. IFPI’s Global Music Report cites subscription streaming as the industry’s growth engine, now accounting for nearly half of recorded-music revenue. When people’s listening is passive or semi-passive, the platform that happens to be open — since you were watching creators five minutes ago — wins by default.
The choices consumers make remind us of how friction makes a big difference: People flock to the app that eliminates steps. YouTube’s one-stop funnel, from bite-size clips to a full video to a single-tap handoff into the Music app, condenses that path toward discovery. Deezer’s interface is superior once you’re inside, but for many listeners, they never get that far.
The Bottom Line For Streamers Choosing Services
If you value a clean interface, fine-grained control of discovery and lossless audio, Deezer is the connoisseur’s choice. It seems made for listeners who want fewer obstacles and more signal. But if you care about video and podcasts with great metadata, not to mention the appeal of a single-subscription service that clears YouTube clutter out of your sight, YouTube Music is still the pragmatic choice.
I genuinely prefer using Deezer. I still won’t be switching; value beats elegance for me as a listener. The conclusion isn’t that one service is clearly better than the other — it’s that the best app is what works for your budget, your area, and your habits. Given that, I’m going to put YouTube ahead at this point, though Deezer does win the usability crown.
