[Titan2]

Gemini answers: You absolutely can! Both platforms allow you to listen to your own music alongside their streaming catalogs, but they handle the process very differently.

Here is exactly how it works for each:

### **YouTube Music (True Cloud Uploads)**

YouTube Music has a true cloud-upload feature. This means they actually host your files on their servers, allowing you to stream them from any device without needing your computer turned on.

* **The Perks:** You can upload up to 100,000 of your own songs. Even if you are on the free tier, you can listen to your uploaded tracks ad-free, offline, and in the background.
* **How to upload:** You cannot upload directly from the mobile app. You need to go to **music.youtube.com** on a computer (or use a mobile web browser set to "Desktop site"). Click your profile picture in the top right corner and select **Upload music**, then select your files (FLAC, M4A, MP3, OGG, or WMA).
* **Where to find them:** Your tracks will live in your Library under a dedicated **Uploads** tab, and you can easily mix them into playlists with regular YouTube Music tracks.

### **Spotify (Local File Sync)**

Spotify does *not* host your personal music files in the cloud. Instead, it uses a "Local Files" system, which basically turns the Spotify app into a media player for the files physically sitting on your device's hard drive.

* **The Catch:** Because the files aren't in the cloud, listening to them on multiple devices requires some manual syncing.
* **How to set it up (Desktop):** Open the Spotify desktop app, click your profile picture, and go to **Settings**. Scroll down, toggle on **Show Local Files**, and click **Add a source** to select the folder on your computer where your music files live.
* **How to get them on your phone:** Create a playlist on your computer and add your local files to it. Then, make sure your phone and computer are on the same Wi-Fi network, open the Spotify app on your phone, navigate to that playlist, and hit the **Download** button to sync the files over.
* **Mobile-only method:** If you already have the audio files saved directly to your phone's storage, you can simply open the Spotify mobile app, go to Settings, and toggle on **Show audio files from this device** (under "Local Files").

Would you like help figuring out how to convert your existing music collection into the right audio formats (like MP3 or FLAC) so you can get them uploaded?