When I first gave you the lowdown on Music Assistant, I was pumped about its potential, although I had to admit, it wasn't quite ready for the big leagues. The latest release, however, has upped its game, introducing a much-anticipated global search feature and adding YouTube Music to its roster of supported services. And of course, we also get the usual bug squashing, performance tuning and some nifty tweaks to the user interface, as you'd expect from any major software update.
YouTube Music takes the stage on Music Assistant
YouTube Music may still be trailing Spotify when it comes to functionality and user numbers, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its fanbase who's been itching for it to be part of Music Assistant's line-up.
The major hitch in making this happen has been YouTube Music's lack of an official API. If it did, it probably would have shared the stage with Spotify from the get-go when Music Assistant made its debut. But alas, integrating it isn't as straightforward as keying in your username and password.
You'll need to put on your detective hat and use Chrome's network tools to figure out your login cookie. It's a bit of a process to get the information you need for the YouTube Music integration. The mastermind behind this, MarvinSchenkel on GitHub, has walked you through the steps on the project's discussion board. Let's keep our fingers crossed that Google will pull up their socks and make their service more accessible.
Go beyond your Music Assistant library with global search
While the addition of YouTube Music is a sweet tune to our ears, the existing users will be doing a little victory dance with the introduction of global search. Before this, you were restricted to playing only the tracks you'd liked in the Spotify app. Your library was your universe, and the wider Spotify library was out of bounds. That's all changing now. With global search, you can hunt down any artist you fancy, as long as they have a presence on Spotify.
