YouTube Music is the best music streaming service because of the amount of music on offer

The argument

YouTube Music is not only on par with rivals Apple Music and Spotify when it comes to music catalog, but there is also the added bonus of millions of YouTube videos that subscribers can download and watch anytime they want - free of ads. The app has a "Hotlist" section that displays the current most popular YouTube videos. If you have previously used YouTube, YouTube Music also utilizes your previous viewing and listening history to create personalized radio stations. YouTube Music adds a visual aspect to music streaming that other services either do not offer, or offer in a very limited capacity. Users have the ability to view music and lyric videos that go with songs; there is, of course, an audio-only option as well. In addition to being able to listen to all of the most popular songs, YouTube Music users also have the ability to download unofficial music that would not be available on other paid streaming services. The sheer amount of songs available, along with the added bonus of being able to watch lyric and music videos, are what make YouTube Music the superior streaming service - especially for users who had already been frequenting YouTube's free site prior to subscribing.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The case is built on quantity, and quantity of the wrong thing. What is added to the music catalogue here is video — a different product from the one the question asks about. A reader comparing music streaming services is generally weighing audio quality, recommendation accuracy, offline reliability, playlist tools and interface, none of which the argument addresses; a large library of watchable videos does not answer any of them. On the criteria it skips, the service has not led. Rivals have offered lossless and high-resolution audio tiers that it has not matched, and its bitrate ceiling has been a standing criticism among listeners who care about fidelity. The bundling also complicates the comparison the argument wants to make, since the ad-free video access it counts as a bonus comes with a subscription that includes the wider video service, so the price being compared with rivals is not for the same thing. The 'unofficial music' advantage is the weakest element. That content is user-uploaded, of variable and often poor audio quality, unreliable in that it disappears when rights-holders issue takedowns, and it routes no payment to the artists whose work it reproduces — a feature that some listeners will count against the service rather than for it. The argument's own closing sentence concedes the point: it recommends the service particularly for people already using the video platform, which is a case for a segment rather than for the best service.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Catalogue parity is asserted rather than shown, and the additions counted are video content and trending lists, which do not bear on the criteria by which a music service is usually judged. [Rejecting P2] Unofficial uploads are variable in quality, liable to removal on rights-holder request and unremunerated for artists, so their availability is not straightforwardly an advantage.