YouTube Music uploads saved my rare songs — here’s how

Music collecting and appreciation is a deeply personal hobby. It’s something very important to me and serves as a snapshot of time and place. Over the years, most of us of a certain vintage have built our music libraries piece by piece, from rare digital downloads and fan remixes to songs that never made it to streaming platforms. Even mixtapes if you, like me, are a 90s or earlier kid. For me, those tracks represent more than nostalgia. They’re a record of growing up online, scouring file-sharing forums for one-off singles, MySpace, and now, an ever-growing collection of vinyl records collected during my travels.

Every record I collect tells a story. A dusty Cuban jazz album I picked up in Havana, the Japanese city pop release I stumbled upon in a secondhand store in Shibuya, or the deep techno record from a small label in Berlin that went under decades ago. You catch my drift. These albums aren’t just music albums, they’re memories. And yet, when I want to go back to any of them on the go, it’s not an option. Way too many of them don’t exist anywhere in the digital domain. Not on Spotify, not on Apple Music, and all too often, not even on YouTube.

The fact is, I’m on every streaming service. When streaming took over, I tried my best to move with it. Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, YouTube Music, I even had Qobuz for a while. But no matter how wide their catalogs stretched, I’ve made my peace with the fact that there will always be gaps. I’ve even tried filling that gap with PlexAmp, but that’s got its own set of issues. There’s a reason I keep coming back to YouTube Music. The answer is simple. YouTube Music’s personal upload feature might just be the most underrated part of any streaming app today. It gave me back something I thought I’d lost forever — the ability to stream my personal music library again, without losing the magic of streaming discoverability.

I’ll be honest. When I first started using YouTube Music, I wasn’t particularly impressed. Compared to Spotify’s stellar playlist curation or Apple’s polished design and lossless audio, it felt like an afterthought. To be fair, I’m still not its biggest fan. The interface leans too heavily on YouTube’s video-first DNA, and the curation can sometimes push live versions or remixes instead of the actual track. But that’s a discussion for another day.

The reason I’ve stuck with YouTube Music is its upload feature, and it changes everything. It lets you add your own MP3 or FLAC files to your personal library, up to 100,000 tracks, and access them across every device. No syncing software or convoluted procedures to upload your music. Just tap a button, select your music, and it’s there. That one feature solved years of frustration with streaming services.

I started small, uploading a few rare tracks from my digital archive, songs ripped from old CDs, mixtapes from my failed experiments at DJ-ing, my band demos, even remixes I’d found on long-deleted blogs. Then I began digitizing my vinyl collection. Many of these records, especially the ones I found while traveling, don’t exist on any streaming platform. The moment I played one of those digitized records back on YouTube Music, hearing it stream seamlessly next to modern releases, I realized how transformative this feature really is.

It’s not just about convenience. It’s about preserving music that would otherwise disappear. Be it a rare jazz pressing from the 70s, a forgotten indie band from the MySpace era, or a live performance that was never reissued, all of these are the cultural artifacts that slip through the cracks of licensing and distribution. Uploading them gives them permanence, even if it’s only within my personal library. Moreover, as much as I take care of my CD and record collection, there will come a time when physical media degrades. Bit rot exists, so does dust and heat. Giving them an online presence keeps them safe from the vagaries of time.

Setting it up is surprisingly simple. You open music.youtube.com, tap the profile icon in the top-right corner, and select Upload music. From there, you can choose files from your local storage, whether MP3, FLAC, or AAC, and YouTube Music takes care of the rest. A few minutes of processing later, the tracks appear in your library under Uploads.

From that point on, they behave like any other song in the app. You can search for them, add them to playlists, download them offline, and even cast them to your speakers. The uploads blend seamlessly with your regular streaming catalog. There’s no real separation between personal and official tracks, no metadata mismatch, and no further degradation in audio quality over the source material. Within the scope of your personal library, it’s as if the music always existed on YouTube Music. Of course, you can’t share this music with others, but that’s a small sacrifice.

This overall simplicity is what makes the feature brilliant. Google doesn’t overcomplicate it with syncing apps or backup tools. You upload what you want, when you want, and YouTube Music just works around it.

That said, the system isn’t perfect. Uploading very large libraries can be a bit of a challenge. Because YouTube Music relies on a web-based file picker, you can’t simply drag in folders or automate uploads the way you might with a syncing app. I had to break my library into smaller batches and upload them in chunks, a tedious but necessary process if you’re dealing with thousands of files. Considering this feature is geared towards enthusiasts like me, I wouldn’t mind a better upload tool.

Similarly, once uploaded, there’s also no way to download your music back from the cloud. You can stream and cache your songs offline, but YouTube Music doesn’t offer a “restore library” option. If you lose your local copies, you can’t just redownload everything from your account. I suspected this to be the case going in, and it’s not a dealbreaker, but it’s worth knowing before you dive in.

There are also some quirks around metadata. While YouTube Music generally preserves track titles and artwork, it doesn’t display all the custom tags that collectors might rely on, like recording year or composer notes. It’s a small limitation that I came across while uploading some classical music recordings. Once again, not a dealbreaker, but for someone who’s spent years curating detailed libraries, it’s noticeable.

Even so, these are minor trade-offs for what you get in return. YouTube Music lets you build a stable, accessible, cloud-based version of your personal music collection that lives right next to your streaming catalog. I can live with that.

For me, the best part of YouTube Music’s upload feature is how it connects the two analog and digital worlds I love. My vinyl collection has always been a personal archive. Every time I pick up a record from a crate in a local store or flea market halfway across the world, I’m preserving a small piece of music history. It’s my go-to travel souvenir. But vinyl is fragile. Records warp, sleeves fade, and all too often, the record is not in very good condition to begin with.

Digitizing those records and uploading them gives them a second life. Now, I can listen to my rare Mari Amachi record while traveling or stream an unreleased Cuban jazz album I digitized in high quality without worrying about losing access. My personal library travels with me.

You see, it’s not about replacing vinyl, it’s about complementing it. The ritual and process of dropping a needle on a record still matters. The difference is that I can now carry that same catalog in my pocket, perfectly synced with my streaming favorites. I know PlexAmp exists, and I enjoy that too. But YouTube Music excels in its ability to club my personal collection with its own vast online library. In a world where streaming has made music disposable, YouTube Music’s upload feature is the digital equivalent of maintaining your own record shelf, only with a lot less dust.

YouTube Music’s personal upload feature isn’t a headline-grabber, nor is it new. In fact, I haven’t seen Google talk about it in years. But it’s hands-down one of the most empowering features in modern music streaming. It bridges the gap between collectors and streamers, between vinyl enthusiasts and digital minimalists. Both of which perfectly define me. For me, it’s been a way to preserve and carry the music that defines who I am, from the records I’ve found around the world to the digital music that shaped my early years online. The fact that I can keep them all in one place, accessible anywhere, is reason enough to keep using the service. YouTube Music respecting personal ownership isn’t something I expected to see surviving as a feature in 2025, but here we are. The uploads feature does exactly that, and it’s a big reason why it will keep earning my monthly subscription.