Listen to YouTube tunes on your iPhone with Tuner

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Listen to YouTube tunes on your iPhone with Tuner

Tuner for YouTube Music lets you play the audio from YouTube videos and create and edit playlists. Get the app now while it's free.

YouTube has proven over the years to be more than a video repository, offering a wealth of live and recorded music. If you use YouTube to listen to music, then you might want to give the Tuner for YouTube Music app a whirl. It's currently free as a launch offer, according to the developer, and lets you stream the audio of YouTube videos and create playlists on your iPhone.

The Tuner app was released only last week and offers a very basic feature set. It does not require you to sign into a YouTube account to get started. In fact, you can't sign into your YouTube account if you wanted to access your existing playlists or subscriptions. To find music to play, tap the three-lined button in the lower-right corner. It will allow you to browse through suggested artists, any playlists you have created using the app, or search.

Playback controls are limited. The app doesn't provide a slider to scrub through a song, and if you search for a song and begin playing it, you can't skip forward or back to another song from that artist. You can, however, skip around when listening to a suggested artist or a playlist. To create a playlist or add a song to an existing playlist, tap the "+" button in the lower-right corner while listening to a song. You can also add songs from the search results page to a playlist without interrupting the current song playing; when you tap on a track from search results, you get two options: Play and Add to Playlist.

From the Playlists tab, you can tap the Edit button to delete entire playlists. And if you tap on a playlist while in edit mode, you can then delete and rearrange individual tracks.

The app supports AirPlay, and it plays in the background, displaying playback controls and artist artwork on the lock screen. It also lets you share the current track on Facebook or Twitter. You can enable repeat or shuffle playback options, but there is no way to set the streaming quality. Lastly, the app manages to avoid playing ads, which trumps any features missing at present.