YT Music's candid nudge

YT Music has its work cut out going up against the likes of Spotify and Apple Music. But YouTube's access to thousands of user-generated playlists, remixes and, of course, music videos, makes it a respectable music-streaming contender.

For YT Music to convert users into customers, it has to demonstrate the premium benefits in a candid way. It achieves this with a clear and concise upsell prompt that puts the benefits into context to help the user make a quick and easy decision.

Why this is really good UX:

• The content is organized in a list that provides users with a format that follows their natural Z-shaped scanning pattern. The eye flows from the first basic tick to the adjacent premium tick, then down a level to the diagonal basic tick and so on. This makes the content easier to read and compare, and it allows YT Music to fit more information into one screen.
• The call-to-action is candid and useful. The simplicity of the CTA infers little work is required of the user to start their free trial, which makes it more appealing.
• Color is used carefully to draw attention to the benefits of the “Music Premium” option, and because of the law of similarity, these benefits are then perceived to be connected to the CTA as they share the same bold color.
• The biggest benefit of “Music Premium” is to be able to download music. This is positioned last in the list because users have a propensity to remember the last item in a series and place greater weight on it when forming a judgement— this is known as the recency effect.