YouTube’s music streaming service ‘YouTube Music’ has now added a new feature in an attempt to make the platform more useful for its users. The streaming service now serves its users personalised playlists alongside all the regular content it has been showing up for all this time.
These playlists, titled ‘Your Mix’, ‘Discover Mix’, and ‘New Release Mix’, look very much as if they were inspired by Spotify’s excellent recommendations based personalised playlists, including the ‘Discover Weekly’ playlist that I’ve personally found to be one of the best at recommending new music that’s very much to my liking.
While the names of the playlists YouTube Music is using makes it pretty clear what types of recommendations they will offer, it’s noteworthy that the ‘Discover Mix’ playlist will include songs from artists you don’t currently listen to but are deemed to your liking by YouTube Music’s algorithms, along with some lesser-known songs from artists that you already do listen to. The Discover Mix playlist will include 50 songs, and YouTube will refresh the playlist every Wednesday unlike Spotify, which refreshes the Discover Weekly playlist on Mondays.
More exciting however, is the ‘New Releases Mix’ playlist. While Spotify’s ‘Release Radar’ refreshes every week to include new songs from artists that you like listening to, YouTube Music will be constantly refreshing the ‘New Releases Mix’ playlist as artists put out new music out into the world. That sounds like a much faster way to stay aware of the latest songs from your favorite artists.
Google is saying that these three playlists are just the beginning of what the company is planning in terms of personalised playlists for its users, and that users should “stay tuned for more music mixed just for you.” While some users have been seeing these personalised playlists on YouTube Music for quite some time, the company has only today made these personalised playlists available on the YouTube Music app on both iOS and Android, and also on the web player for YouTube Music for everyone.
