YouTube Music uploaded Format

[Donald]

I see I can upload music in a few formats, like MP3, WMA, FLAC, others. Some of those are lossless. So what format is YouTube Music storing it when I upload it. If its a lossless format then it seems it would best to RIP off CD into a lossless format like WMA Lossless rather than what I have been doing which was MP3.

On the other hand I am over 65, hearing is a little shot like the rest of my body. Too much loud music in college.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Not sure in what format YT Music is actually storing your uploads, but when you play them back from the cloud, they're streamed as 256 kbps AAC, AFAIK.

 

[Skippy722]

Normal quality on YouTube music is 128kbps AAC, high quality is 256kbps AAC.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Youtube will **store** the original file and you'll be able to download it again at a later date. It will **stream** that file in a variety of (lossy) formats (https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/9076559?hl=en) which will be both selectable by the user and would auto-adapt to screen sizes and network performance.

I would 100% upload a lossless format: Not only will you have a pristine file archived for later retrieval if and when you need; but Youtube will NOT be re-compressing the file, introducing artifacts from two compressions.