Most of YouTube content isn't music though. Why are they so user hostile - e.g. why can't I listen to talks/podcasters in the background while browsing the internet?

Try Firefox for Android - it allows background nedia streaming, and even puts controls in the notification drawer. It also allows adblocking, extensions, has the amazing reader mode which makes the most unusable websites readable again.

The current version 55 is a little slower than Chrome on my 3 year old phone, but performance in the past few major versions has definitely improved. The nighty developer build of Firefox 57 absolutely flies.

Mozilla is doing an amazing job with their Firefox modernization, it's a shame how little attention it gets on Android.

Another reason to use Firefox is to resist the monoculture of just one dominating browser, that's also made by the same company that makes the most common mobile OS and a lot of dominating web services, like Youtube. Allo for the web still only works in Chrome, because Google know they can get away with it.

Nice suggestion, but note that, since Google started abusing the page visibility API for their scummy ends, using Firefox is not enough by itself in order to play YouTube media in background. To restore its ability to do so, you also need this add-on:

Video Background Play Fix https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-backgro...

Can't you already do that by using multiple tabs?

I'm not sure that's actually true in practice.

I think a better question is why would a talk/podcaster be using YouTube for distribution?

Use Newpipe, now you can.

If you're in the US, you can do that with Youtube Red.

But I'm not, so I'm not allowed to. I wouldn't have a problem with it if I could - paying for ad-free YouTube with added features seems like a fair deal to me.

I wouldn't call "letting me turn off the screen or switch to another application while still consuming media" an "additional feature". Especially since they must go out of their way in the first place to detect when that is happening and to prevent me from doing so, as they do on their mobile website.

Curious to know if with youtube red, if i play in the background is it smart enough to switch to an audio only stream, or still full bandwidth?

Good question. As they normally serve their content as separate audio and video streams, it should be perfectly feasible to do that. I wouldn't bet on it, however.

I believe if you use the Youtube Music app to play things, you'll get audio only.

Amusingly, this does answer the parent question.

That’s their problem. A browser should always give a user the upper hand.

Browser block popups, forcefully enable right-click on sites that disable it, browsers allow users to forcefully enable zoom, or background playback.

And just like that, browsers should also allow users to forcefully enable PiP.

In a similar fashion, Firefox for Android should prevent YouTube from pausing when it detects it has lost focus, as that's clearly an abuse of power with the shameless intent to inhibit non-Chrome browser functionality. See my other comment a little up the tree.

Too bad Mozilla won't ever dare to defend themselves from Google's bullying and will happily accept having background playback on YouTube, until now one of the primary motives for people to try Fennec out, being taken away.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1355407

RESOLVED WONTFIX

Thank you for sharing this. These are exactly the types of pain points where Mozilla could distinguish itself.