YouTube Music becomes unavailable when the beta YouTube ad-blocking feature is enabled

GBR
3 days ago
6replies

Hello NextDNS team!

I'd like to report a compatibility issue with the new beta YouTube ad-blocking feature available under Privacy → Blocklists.

During my testing, I discovered that enabling this feature makes YouTube Music completely unusable.

Observed behavior

When the beta YouTube ad-blocking feature is enabled:

Regular YouTube works perfectly, and advertisements are successfully blocked.
YouTube Music fails to load its online services.
The Android app displays a message stating that YouTube Music is not available in my country.
Online music streaming and cloud library access become unavailable.
Only locally stored music remains accessible.

Testing and reproduction

I tested the feature in both enabled and disabled states.

Feature disabled: YouTube Music works normally across my devices.
Feature enabled: YouTube Music becomes unavailable again.

This behavior is reproducible in my environment.

Environment

Country: Brazil
DNS provider: NextDNS
Feature: Beta YouTube ad-blocking
Affected service: YouTube Music
Affected platform: Android

Expected behavior

The beta feature should block YouTube advertisements without interfering with YouTube Music functionality, including regional availability checks, online streaming, search, and cloud library access.

Request

Could you please investigate whether the beta YouTube ad-blocking infrastructure or its filtering rules are inadvertently interfering with YouTube Music?

In particular, the incorrect country availability message makes me wonder whether some requests required for regional availability checks or service initialization are being affected.

I understand that this is a beta feature, and I appreciate the work being done to improve YouTube ad blocking.

I'd be happy to provide additional DNS logs, timestamps, and reproduction steps if needed.

Thank you for your time and for maintaining NextDNS!

- Tieek
- 3 days ago
- Reported - view
That's strange — I'm from Brazil too, and I can access YouTube normally on both PC and Android, using it normally with the ad filter enabled.

The only thing I've noticed is constant freezing, and the quality dropping to 144p or the video stopping altogether.
- GBR
  
  2 days ago
  
  Reported - view
  Hey! Actually, I'm experiencing those same issues with regular YouTube too — the constant freezing, buffering, and quality dropping to 144p.
  
  I just wanted to clarify that my report is specifically focused on YouTube Music, because the issue there is much more severe.
  
  With the beta feature enabled, YouTube Music becomes completely unusable for me. The Android app says the service isn't available in my country, and I lose access to online streaming and my cloud music library. Only locally stored music remains accessible.
  
  It looks like we're experiencing similar issues with regular YouTube, but I also have this additional problem with YouTube Music.
  
  Thanks for sharing your experience! It's helpful to know that others are experiencing playback issues as well.
- EggsOnAShip
  
  2 days ago
  
  Reported - view
  yea same! I am seeing lag and downgrade in quality
- Tieek
  
  2 days ago
  
  Reported - view
  It’s been normal for me for a few days now; it’s not freezing anymore. Has it normalized for you?
  
  Try checking whether your network has a VPN active or whether your carrier is blocking some type of access.
- Rhys_Liam_Hardy
  
  yesterday
  
  Reported - view
  a request over DNS must go over the internet to a dns server located in a country that doesn’t have the legal ability to present ads/commercials. This request is simply to ask YouTube to issue the next part of the video download. This does not mean your download should be or will be routed via that same country and would usually be served up by a local google data center. What this suggests to me is not that the video traffic is slow but that the ISP has congested and inadequate sub sea fiber optic interlinks that results in a delay to the request to actually get the details about where to load the next part of the video from. Videos are split into 100s of pieces typically. Some low quality formats are single files still (which may also explain fallback to 144p as this format needs only a singular request from where to load). Ultimately I do not see Nextdns being able to remedy or change this. If on iOS private relay may help (would need to get a mobileconfig profile and not have this blocked in settings, as it can provide a fallback even for non safari traffic routing if the traffic fails via normal means).
- GBR
  
  yesterday
  
  Reported - view
  I see where you're coming from, and I agree that DNS resolution, CDN selection, and network conditions can all influence video playback. However, I think it's important to distinguish between a possible explanation for playback instability and the specific issue I'm reporting.
  
  DNS resolution can influence which servers a service connects to, but attributing these symptoms to ISP congestion, submarine cable routes, or regional server selection is still speculation without further evidence. More importantly, that explanation doesn't really address what happens with YouTube Music in my case.
  
  This isn't simply a matter of videos buffering, loading slowly, or falling back to a lower resolution. With the beta feature enabled, YouTube Music actually reports that the service is unavailable in my country. Online streaming and access to my cloud library stop working entirely, while locally stored music remains accessible.
  
  I've also tested this repeatedly under the same conditions, simply toggling the beta feature on and off. Whenever it's enabled, the issue returns; whenever it's disabled, YouTube Music immediately works normally again. That makes the connection to the beta feature particularly difficult to dismiss as a coincidence.
  
  I'm not ruling out network-related factors, but I don't think it's reasonable to assume that ISP restrictions or routing issues are the cause when the behavior consistently follows the state of a specific NextDNS feature.
  
  The playback problems on regular YouTube are worth investigating in their own right, but the YouTube Music issue is a distinct compatibility problem and deserves attention on its own.
  
  Ultimately, I'm not trying to speculate about the underlying implementation. I'm reporting a reproducible issue and providing the conditions under which it occurs so that the NextDNS team can investigate it properly.

Content aside

5 Votes
yesterdayLast active
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