Google Chrome Beta For Android Now Lets You Play YouTube In the Background (techtimes.com)

The recently released version of Chrome on Android -- v54 (albeit in beta) -- finally brings a feature that users have been requesting for years: it lets them play YouTube songs in the background. Much like some of you, there are many out there who prefer listening to songs on YouTube instead of getting a subscription or otherwise downloading a music-streaming service. From a TechTimes report: With version 54, Google introduced a handful of updates to Chrome Beta. The new version introduces a handful of features that include background video and playback and a redesigned new tab page, among others. Among the features that are packed in the said beta version, background video playback is perhaps the most significant. In older iterations of Chrome, including version 53, videos will get paused once a new app is opened or after switching to the home screen. In version 54 beta, the videos will still get paused automatically but Android users are provided with an option to resume them via a media notification. Audio from the video will continuously be heard while using other apps.

Comments

Hmmm

[wbr1]

I wonder if it will stay after beta. You get this in the youtube app if you play for google play music (which I do for other reasons). It is a nice feature to have, but I do not see them giving it away for free when it is an advertised premium feature in another app.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Inform the uninformed (me). What quality is typical Youtube audio/music? Does it compare to CD quality in general? I get that it depends on the source, but what quality is typically available?

Re:Hmmm

[CrashNBrn]

Google Play Music ~320kbps. Amazon ~256kbps. Unfortunately, both are NOT variable bit rate. You can get CD-level quality encoding with VBR 256-320kbps.
At least with Amazon, you can buy CD's, and download MP3's immediately; rip to desired bitrate later. I wont be buying any more music through Google Play Music unless lossless is offered as a download option (wavpack, flac, winzip compressed wav's (which is just wavpack)).

Re:Hmmm

[Lisandro]

1080p videos on YouTube have audio transcoded to 192kbps AAC, which is generally regarded as indistinguishable from CD quality.

Re:Hmmm

[SmilingBoy]

320 kbps are clearly enough so that no one can distinguish this from CD quality (even when it is MP3, and even without VBR). Personally, I use Vorbis with q5.5 as the quality setting, which averages around 175 kbps, and which is in my view as good as CD quality. The reason for getting uncompressed music files is to be able to convert to any format you desire later. Converting 320 kbps MP3 to 320 kbps Opus would probably not result in CD quality anymore, but if you rip your music as FLAC, you do not have this problem.

Re:Hmmm

[wbr1]

I use it for streaming, not purchasing. Music I want to purchase I find CDs and rip my own FLACs and transcode to lossy copies as needed.

For streaming I have it set to the lower quality for mobile data, and in my car it sounds good enough. Even on decent headphones I rarely hear compression artifacts.

I do have a pretty sensitive ear (even in the high frequencies where compression artifacts and lack of headroom show up in abundance), and my normal headphone listening rig is a set of AKG K240 cans and a homemade O2 headphone amp. Not the best but certainly good enough to make bad encoding stand out like a sore thumb.

So while I do not know googles streaming encoding, for me it is sufficient for random playlists on long drives.

Re:Hmmm

[wbr1]

This also depends on the source material. I have seen '1080p' youtube videos that were poorly encoded prior to upload and of course they sound/look like crap.

Re:Hmmm

[bill_mcgonigle]

I do not see them giving it away for free when it is an advertised premium feature in another app.

You know, this was the #1 requested feature for the YouTube app for years and then Google finally implemented it but made it a $120/yr option and threatened lawsuits against apps that provided the capability already if they didn't withdraw from the market. It was probably the most Evil thing I've ever seen Google do.

XPosed Framework has a module that remedies this problem. I would have been glad to pay $10 for an app, but $500 over the expected life of my phone? That's more than the phone costs. I don't want to listen to their music catalog - just some old lectures while I'm doing housework.

Re:Hmmm

[wbr1]

It is not 120 a year just to play in the background. The main features are streaming from a large catalog of music and uploading your own library for streaming/backup. This pricing is on par with other music streaming providers and just happens to add background play with it.

Re: Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

When I play the YouTube app and change applications the Music Stops. So how was the play in the background for you?

Not fixing the underlying cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Great job fixing the symptoms, not the underlying cause, Google.

The reason we need this hack is because Android essentially stops any application that is not on the foreground (if memory pressure becomes an issue, the application is killed instead). It's a bit more complicated that that, but this is the gist of the problem.

If Android had some option for "minimizing" applications - a "get this application out of my face, but DON'T close it, dammit!" button - we wouldn't need this hack, which, I bet, is not even general. I bet either it only works with "blessed" websites, or with the ones that meet Google's arbitrary requirements.

This is an Android UI issue, not a Chrome issue. Google needs to start moving the OS toward being more multi-tasking friendly.

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[omnichad]

Because playing a video in a background where 90% of the downloaded data is wasted is not a problem...

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the matter, are you stupid or something?

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[dmitrygr]

Spoken like a person who's never designed battery-powered systems. People do not understand the distinction between backgrounded and killed. You might (perhaps maybe) but the general user does not. Add to this the general incompetence of your average "app" writer, and you're left with hundreds of background threads keeping your CPU wake and making your battery life shit. What android does (and iOS too) is the only sane thing to do when on batteries: do your best to make as few things run as possible. Have special APIs for background tasks that actually need to happen in background (downloading, updates, audio).

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[hey!]

Well, obvious answers have non-obvious consequences.

I remember when Windows Vista came out. It was roundly reviled for many things, performance being one of them. But in fact its average performance wasn't that bad. The real problem was premature optimization; Microsoft pulled every trick they could imagine to tweak the behemoth's average performance but the result was the speed at which the UI responded was inconsistent. Users adapt to a UI having a certain rhythm; and if that rhythm is inconsistent the system is perceived as slow, no matter what the average looks like. Back in the day text coming off a teleprinter on a 300 baud modem seemed fast. But today a hiccup in a web page loading is intolerable.

The problem with smartphones is that they stay on for weeks. If you let background tasks accumulate, even on the user's say-so, performance may get uneven, which in its way is worse than slow.

Now you can say that it's a useful tradeoff to accept that possibility in return for having more control, and that's certainly a valid position. This gets to the part of user interfaces that is quite tricky: people have different opinions about things and those opinions are valid for them. For example you could also say that it's better to condition the user to certain limitations in background processes in return for having a consistent response to starting a new tasks or continuing the present one.

I'd say given Android's success, Google's choice was a reasonable starting point, but starting points are never ideal. The next step when you've achieved a basic level of success it to build on that by incorporating the things you consciously avoided doing at the outset.

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[squiggleslash]

This is completely untrue. Android apps can and do run in the background if they're written such that they can. People background phone and music apps all the time. Third party VoIP and music apps can also be backgrounded, so this isn't some case of Android handling the Phone and Play Music apps specially.

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[Solandri]

The reason we need this hack is because Android essentially stops any application that is not on the foreground (if memory pressure becomes an issue, the application is killed instead)

That's how iOS used to work until recently (when real multitasking was added). Any time you started a new app, the previous one's state was saved and it was killed. "Switching" to the previous app meant saving the state of the current app and killing it, then restoring the saved state of the previous app. This gave the illusion of multitasking, but there was no multitasking going on.

Android has always supported multitasking (it's based on the Linux kernel), and apps not in the foreground continue to run until memory is exhausted, at which point the oldest/least used has its state saved and is killed to free up memory. Android utilities (like backup utilities), Google Play app updates, music playing apps, etc. run just fine in the background (formerly, iOS needed a kludge to get music to play in the "background"). Video not playing in the background is a choice made by the video app designer - a pretty good choice too in most cases. No point decoding and rendering the video if it can't be viewed. And it's a reasonable assumption that if someone watching a video switches to a different app, like text messaging or to take a phone call, that they want the video paused until they can switch back to it.

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[Anonymous Coward]

There are ways to get an audio-only stream from YouTube, but it's against their terms of service to separate audio and video. :-P

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[PingSpike]

Since google is responsible for youtube, chrome and android all fingers point in the same direction.

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[Lisandro]

Sure. That's why i am totally unable to listen MP3 music on my phone while using other apps - or none at all.

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[macs4all]

you're left with hundreds of background threads keeping your CPU wake and making your battery life shit

Wait! Wasn't that what the Fandroids all kept calling "True Multitasking", and made fun of iOS because it suspended most "backgrounded" Apps?

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[Anonymous Coward]

They point in the direction of Google's ass?

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[Yvan256]

Because playing a video in a background where 90% of the downloaded data is wasted is not a problem...

Well, if it's not a problem then why are you even mentioning it?

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why Android doesn't kill the shitload of Google apps running in the background all the time?

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[wbr1]

I know with play music if you switch off the youtube app it stops buffering/rendering the video portion of the stream. Whether chrome is smart enough to signal lost focus to youtube for this is another question.

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[w1z7ard]

Except that android's audio api keeps going through drastic changes and/or deprecations. Quite annoying as I maintain a music visualizer which needs to sniff the audio signal.

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[MikeBabcock]

Waze runs fine in the background, downloads run fine in the background, Spotify runs fine in the background ... never mind, you just don't know how Android works.

Re:Not fixing the underlying cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you can't recognize sarcasm then why are you even replying?

the same dumbasses streaming video

[Anonymous Coward]

simply to listen to audio are probably the same dumbasses complaining about bandwidth caps.

Re:the same dumbasses streaming video

[jergantic]

It does seem stupid at first glance, but I have found a number of songs available on YouTube which are not available for (legal) streaming or download anywhere else. The video typically consists of a still image of the album artwork, so the extra bandwidth is negligible. And with YouTube Red (the paid service that also gets rid of ads and comes bundled with Google Play Music), you can download videos instead of streaming, so there's no hit to your data plan.

Here's how to do it on the iPhone

[JoeyRox]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

thanks for nothing Google

[frovingslosh]

I have a bad habit on the PC of leaving tabs open and coming back later to finish reading something or start following links. Often I end up with multiple browser windows with multiple tabs in each. It becomes a real problem when some damn auto play ad or news story starts up and I can't even find which window it is in to shut it down. So now Google is setting up Android so that so that the browser will play unseen videos in the background. Nobody wants that!

And if you're thinking "I could run music on YouTube in the background", get a clue. You can already play background music with apps like Pandora or Slacker or several Internet radio apps, and that will waste much less bandwidth, data and battery power.

Re:thanks for nothing Google

[drinkypoo]

if you're thinking "I could run music on YouTube in the background", get a clue. You can already play background music with apps like Pandora or Slacker or several Internet radio apps, and that will waste much less bandwidth, data and battery power.

It is actually possible to get audio only from youtube with a chrome extension. It would be nice if this were made a central feature of the platform, though. There's lots of shows which are essentially podcasts.

On the other hand, I use Firefox, and I can already "watch" a Youtube video in a background tab. I get a little icon on the tab which lets me know that it's emitting audio, so that I can rapidly close it if that's what I need to do. I usually just use a downloader to watch Youtube videos, because my ISP is crap and I don't want to deal with buffering issues, so I time-shift. There are some of those which will grab just the audio as well.

Re:thanks for nothing Google

[frovingslosh]

I get a little icon on the tab which lets me know that it's emitting audio, so that I can rapidly close it if that's what I need to do.

Yup, that works fine if you only have one window open. That's why I made a point of making it clear that I often end up with multiple windows open (lots of 'em) with tabs in each. Hard to find the source of the noise in that case.

Re:thanks for nothing Google

[drinkypoo]

that works fine if you only have one window open. That's why I made a point of making it clear that I often end up with multiple windows open (lots of 'em) with tabs in each. Hard to find the source of the noise in that case.

While that's true, if you have a lot of open windows which are all making noise, I submit that there are other things you could do to improve your browsing experience. For one, you could be more choosy about which sites you visit. For another, you could use browser extensions which tend to block the kind of activity that produces unwanted noises. I very seldom hear a web page make noise when I'm not expecting it.

Songs? Seriosly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gives a crap about songs? There's oodles of talks, lectures and other talking head content.

Re:Songs? Seriosly?

[Yvan256]

There's also a lot of CNC router, laser cutters and 3D printer videos where people point the camera on their machine to see the whole process and then don't even bother to show us the finished item at the end.

Yet another...

[Anonymous Coward]

... feature that has existed on BlackBerry for many years that the kool kidz are just now getting around to implementing (badly).

YouTube Red is Dead?

[sexconker]

This was a "selling point" of YouTube Red. You can have shit run in the background in the YouTube app if you pay up. Of course, you could do this just fine, for free, before YouTube Red.

Why would they be giving a YouTube Red feature away for free in Chrome?
Why did they bundle YouTube Red with Google Play Music subscriptions?

(Hint: No one is paying for YouTube Red.)

Re:YouTube Red is Dead?

[Yvan256]

And all this time, I thought YouTube Red was a shell company created to absorb all the deficits.

Re:YouTube Red is Dead?

[TheDarkener]

I laughed at the name "YouTube Red" because of the infamous porn site, "RedTube". I was all.....

Horrible idea for mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

Now youtube can eat up more data in the background.

Screen off

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it still play with the screen off? So I can put the phone in my pocket without danger of pressing any buttons (well any more than the sticking-out buttons already get accidentally pressed).

Fixation on the app

[Grismar]

Everybody seems fixated on how to get an app to run properly in the background, but the problem isn't with the app, it's with the service provider. Instead of getting Chrome to play YouTube videos in the background, how about getting YouTube to allow streaming only the audio part of its content (probably including ads, but that's fine - it's the business they're in).

That way, millions of developers can try their hand at creating the perfect apps for using this content, instead of doing something counterproductive like running web browsers in the background.

Obstinate Chrome, ever right, our way is best.

[AbRASiON]

I can't stand Chromes "my way or the highway" attitude on stuff.
I spent over an hour last night, looking for a tool or function which will stop Chrome shrinking tabs to literally 1/4 of an inch in width if you are an extreme browser and exceed 80 or 100 tabs open.

You think I can find a simple "fix tab width" plugin? of course I found a heap of posts from people dating back through 2012, 2011, 2009 asking for a "hey, how can I stop Chrome making my tab width miniscule when I open a shitload of tabs?"
Typically (much like an apple question actually) a heap of people told the person their 'workflow was wrong'. A few actually helped, some of the solutions didn't sound perfect but they would've worked, you know if the features weren't removed from the program ..... (well the instructions I found to enable stacked tabs are no longer relevant anyhow, the option appears to be missing)

God damn I wish Firefox performed faster, I love it as my primary browser but it runs like molasses with an extreme amount of tabs open, even with 24GB of ram and 4 cores. As for Firefox mobile? Gotta hand it to Chrome mobile there, the UI was so much easier to use and more common sense that I just stopped trying eventually, It felt like a late 90's GUI for the 18 months I tried it. It is (was?) an atrocious UI for mobile browsing.

It's about YouTube Red

[Shirley Marquez]

Now that Google is offering their YouTube Red subscription service (granting access to commercial-free YouTube and some exclusive content) this makes perfect sense. And background playing of music is already available with the YouTube Music app; Chrome is just catching up.