In May 2020, an update was released to allow imports from Google Play Music, including purchased music, playlists, cloud libraries, and recommendations. In September 2019, YouTube Music replaced Google Play Music in the core Google Mobile Services bundle distributed on new Android devices. Product manager Elias Roman stated in 2018 that they aimed to reach feature parity with Google Play Music before migrating users to it, but as of 2021 this has not been achieved.

YouTube Music initially operated in parallel with Google Play Music, but the latter was shut down in December 2020. The availability of music includes many of the releases from mainstream artists and extends to any video categorized as music on the YouTube service. YouTube Music became available on Google Assistant smart speakers (including Google Nest smart speakers) on April 18, 2019, with feature-limited ad-supported playback available for non-subscribers in only a limited number of countries. In 2018, YouTube Music reached multiple sponsorship agreements with Dick Clark Productions to serve as a partner for its television specials Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve and the American Music Awards. The YouTube Music subscription is priced in line with its competitors at US$9.99 per-month the price of YouTube Premium was concurrently increased to $11.99 for new subscribers.

The service's benefits will continue to be available as part of the existing YouTube Premium (formerly YouTube Red) service and to Google Play Music All Access subscribers. In addition, YouTube Music became a separate subscription service (positioned as a more direct competitor to Apple Music and Spotify), offering ad-free and background/audio-only streaming, and downloading for offline playback, for music content on YouTube. On May 17, 2018, YouTube announced a new version of the YouTube Music service, including a web-based desktop player and redesigned mobile app, more dynamic recommendations based on various factors, and the use of Google artificial intelligence technology to search songs based on lyrics and descriptions. Although redundant to Google's existing Google Play Music All Access subscription service, the app is designed for users who primarily consume music through YouTube. The YouTube Music app was unveiled in October 2015 and released the following month its release came alongside the unveiling of YouTube Premium (originally called YouTube Red), a larger subscription service that covers the entirety of the YouTube platform, including the Music app.

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