YouTube Continues To Embrace Doctorow’s Word; Say Goodbye To Background Playback
Pay To Play … In The Background On Mobile
If you’ve been enjoying YouTube on your mobile device, Alphabet has gone out of their way to once again hold that enjoyment for ransom. If you aren’t paying for YouTube Premium you will no longer be able to listen to streaming content in the background on mobile browsers. If you minimize YouTube, switch to a different app or let your lock screen come up, then playback will immediately stop.
While there doesn’t seem to be any logical reason to do this from a user’s standpoint, YouTube feels it is necessary to “ensure consistency across all our platforms.” How consistency relates to the cost associated with YouTube Premium isn’t clear, apart from Alphabet trying their best to make their paid version more attractive by making the free version worse.
Welcome to the web of 2026.
Users began reporting the issue last week, noting that audio would cut out the moment they left the browser, sometimes after a brief "MediaOngoingActivity" notification flashed before media controls disappeared.
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