I signed up to a YouTube Premium free trial, and it was annoyingly brilliant — but there’s one setback that’s keeping me from returning

1. Computing
2. Software

I signed up to a YouTube Premium free trial, and it was annoyingly brilliant — but there’s one setback that’s keeping me from returning Features By Rowan Davies published 18 April 2026

Long live the music video

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: Future)

• Copy link
• Facebook
• X
• Whatsapp
• Reddit
• Pinterest
• Flipboard
• Threads
• Email

Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Tech Radar Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox

Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more.

Become a Member in Seconds

Unlock instant access to exclusive member features.

Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

You are now subscribed

Your newsletter sign-up was successful

Join the club

Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards.

Explore An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter

Of all the paywalled services out there, YouTube Premium is the one that I’ve never thought twice about signing up to. After all, I’ve been pretty fine just using its free version — but that changed a few weeks back.

After toying around with the idea and pushing it back on countless occasions, I gave into my temptations and signed up to YouTube Premium’s 1-month free trial. I’ve never quite understood why anyone would sign up to it, for me the price hikes and restrictions on extremely basic features haven’t sold me. Oh how I’ve totally changed my tune.

Over the course of my free trial, I used YouTube Premium more than Netflix, Disney+, and the slew of our best streaming services combined. If anything, it’s as if none of them existed in the first place — here’s what I thought.

Article continues below You may like

• YouTube Premium Lite just got better with two new upgrades we've been waiting a year for
• Google rolls out unskippable ads to YouTube's TV experience to lure more Premium users
• YouTube might be planning to charge users to use its playback-speed tool

Welcome back, MTV

(Image credit: Future)

There’s nothing quite like opening YouTube, tapping on a video, and not having to sit through a jarring ad. Until you sign up for YouTube Premium, you’ll never fully understand how many ads are forced upon you per video, and going back to YouTube’s free version only proves that the number is growing. In retrospect, it’s one of the best parts of the experience, and it makes the music video viewing experience even better.

Though I’ve been a Spotify subscriber for over 10 years, I’ve been vocal on how its music video interface is simply no match to how smooth YouTube’s is. Take away the ads, and it’s like MTV has been resurrected. Besides, it’s a nice change to throw on a personalized Mix of fun music videos instead of a Spotify playlist, especially when you have friends over. Then an idea sprung to mind; what if I created my own playlists to mimic the nostalgia of music channels?

Until I signed up to Premium, I’ve never felt encouraged to make my own playlists in YouTube’s free version. Even though playlist-making isn’t a paywalled feature, you still have to sit through ads when watching the videos. So with that in mind, I used my free trial wisely to experiment with playlist making, and naturally, I created one that screamed ‘00s music channel'.

This took some time to get used to I won’t lie — only because I’ve been accustomed to Spotify and Apple Music’s way of things — but once I got the ball rolling, I was unstoppable. What was very helpful was YouTube’s playlist recommendation tools which, similar to the best music streaming services, sits at the bottom of each playlist giving you a quick and stress-free way of building your playlist with related videos.

Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox

Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more.

Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

It’s safe to say that streaming music videos ad-free and building playlists was one of my favorite parts of the experience, and even my pre-generated Mixes of familiar and suggested videos gave me just as much of a buzz. However, while returning to YouTube Premium isn’t totally off the table for me, I can’t ignore its awkward queuing system.

YouTube, fix your queuing system

(Image credit: Future)

I admit, this is a very small setback, but if you’re a chronic video queuer like me you’ll notice the finer details. But the wildest part is that queuing is a paywalled tool, and I don’t believe I’m getting my money’s worth.

There are two options for queuing videos, ‘Play next in queue’ and ‘Play last in queue’. But what I had the biggest issue with is that YouTube doesn’t separate your queued content from ‘Continue Playing’ content like music streaming does (see Apple Music as an example).

What to read next

• YouTube sparks backlash from free users by cracking down on popular hack
• Spotify just got a neat upgrade, but YouTube Music is paywalling a feature
• YouTube Music has finally rolled out a queue syncing tool it needed years ago

(Image credit: Future)

Instead of grouping your queued videos in a separate list at the top like Apple Music, it integrates them in the list of ‘Continue Playing’ videos. It’s a bit of a headache because you can only choose to play a video immediately, or plonk it on the very end of a lengthy list of recommendations, sandwiching your queued videos on either side.

This means you have to manually reorder the queue so that the videos you want to play next come first. Though the ‘Play next in queue’ button effectively does this, every time you select this option for a new video it overrides the previous video you chose to ‘Play next’, pushing it further down the line. It’s not ideal when you’ve got YouTube playing at a social gathering and all your friends get vexed when the video you queued for them an hour ago has yet to be played.

I could be reading far too deep into this, but it’s one of the downsides to my YouTube Premium experience that I can’t shake off. However YouTube is always making changes to the Premium experience, and I hope it hasn’t forgotten about its queuing system’s much-needed TLC.

Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

TOPICS YouTube Rowan DaviesSocial Links NavigationEditorial Associate

Rowan is an Editorial Associate and Apprentice Writer for TechRadar. A recent addition to the news team, he is involved in generating stories for topics that spread across TechRadar's categories. His interests in audio tech and knowledge in entertainment culture help bring the latest updates in tech news to our readers. 

View More

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.

Logout Read more Websites & Apps YouTube Premium Lite just got better with two new upgrades we've been waiting a year for    Websites & Apps Google rolls out unskippable ads to YouTube's TV experience to lure more Premium users    Computing YouTube might be planning to charge users to use its playback-speed tool    Phones YouTube sparks backlash from free users by cracking down on popular hack    Spotify Spotify just got a neat upgrade, but YouTube Music is paywalling a feature    Audio Streaming YouTube Music has finally rolled out a queue syncing tool it needed years ago    Latest in Software Windows Windows 11 is so bad France is moving to Linux — and many more could follow    Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality Gucci and Google to partner on Android XR smart glasses for 2027 release    Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality Meta hikes Quest 3 and Quest 3S prices — and blames the RAM crisis    macOS 7 of the best Mac apps to level up your new MacBook Neo    Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality Apple drops fresh hint about its rumored Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses rival    Gemini Gemini is now a native macOS app, making it faster and better integrated    Latest in Features Gemini Gemini used my Google Photos library to get personal when making images    AI Platforms & Assistants Sam Altman-backed firm warns AI will soon outgrow facial recognition    Health & Fitness The forward lunge is the best simple move you're not doing, and it's vital for over-50s    Gaming 'I think generative AI is going to get much faster and much better' — The Fallout creator might be optimistic about the technology's impact on games, but I'm not so sure    Gaming Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is a great, atmospheric Lovecraftian game — but one frustrating feature might make me rage quit for good    Pro Why Canva's AI push is no different to its core principles of democratizing design    LATEST ARTICLES

1. 1I just used AI to help plan my wedding for the first time
2. 260,000 WordPress sites at risk due to plugin security flaw
3. 3Massive autonomous cargo drone completes 75-mile mountain delivery of fresh tea
4. 4Dead as Disco is the Hi-Fi Rush successor I've been waiting for
5. 5Sorry Apple, the iPhone 17e is slick but the OnePlus 15R is a bigger bargain