YouTube Music New Features Highlights: Nov 2023

If you’re a listener in the United States using YouTube Music in English, you can now try out a new feature that creates customized playlist art using generative AI. The guided experience allows you to effortlessly explore from a range of visual themes and options to create one-of-a-kind cover art that expresses the uniqueness of your personal playlists. We’re slowly rolling this feature out and hope to bring it to other regions soon!

When creating a playlist, you’ll now see relevant hashtag suggestions (that update in real-time) on the edit page. These hashtags are suggested based on your playlist title and description, and will help other listeners discover &  engage with your playlist! Hashtags are currently available in English only.

When using voice search (English only) on the YouTube Music app for mobile, you now have the ability to steer your results for artist, song & supermix queries. What this means is that as you see your search result, you’ll see options to filter them with prompts like ‘songs I know better’, ‘less known songs’, etc. This is available to Premium members using YouTube Music in English only. 

If you’re using the YouTube Music app on a mobile device, you can now customize / tune existing radios even if they were not originally created using the Custom Radio builder. You’ll notice a ‘Tune’ button across attribute radios that lets you do this!

When searching for a playlist, you’ll notice that you can now launch playlists directly from the suggestions itself. These suggestions will keep updating as you edit or type in your search query. These suggestions will include both featured and community playlists.

[15 Sep] Responsive radio in My Supermix on Android 
If you’re listening to music from your Supermix playlist on Android, you’ll notice that your upcoming song queue changes based on your actions on the song likes, impressions and skips! When your queue is updated, you will also see the message ‘We’ve updated your upcoming music’ at the bottom of your playlist. We hope these real-time updates to the queue gives you a better and more tailored listening experience in Supermix, without you having to make any changes to the queue yourself. This was already available on iOS & Web and is now available on Android devices.

[10 Aug] Expanded coverage for Mixes
If your personalized Mixes are your go-to on YouTube Music, you’ll be happy to know that we’ve removed the restriction where only video-watches on the YouTube Music app influence it! This means that if you’ve been listening to music on your Smart TV & Gaming Console, those listening habits will now also influence your mixes!

You can now enjoy YouTube Music on Fitbit’s latest device, the Charge 6. Easily access your music, exercise based recommendations, and control music on the go!

Launched to all YouTube Music listeners using Fitbit Charge 6.

When searching for an artist or using a broad search query on the YouTube app for Smart TVs & Gaming Consoles, you’ll notice improved search results with an official artist shelf. You can easily enjoy official music content in the form of Artist Mix, Top song videos from Artists and Album playlists on this shelf.

[2 Oct] Integration with Apple HomePod
You can now enjoy YouTube Music on your Apple HomePod smart speakers! Enjoy listening to your music and use either Siri or the Apple Home app to get started and play music throughout your home! 

[14 Sep] Persistent swipeable mini player on iOS
If you listen to music on your mobile device, you may have seen an updated mini player user interface! This new mini player better supports connected playback by 1) moving the cast button from the header to the mini player itself (making it more accessible) and 2) adding swipe-based skipping for next / previous! Note that when your queue is empty, it’ll show an empty state instead of hiding the mini player all together (so that the cast button is always visible!) I’ve noticed a lot of feedback on this feature here, so if you have more to share do file feedback as it goes directly to the team working on this feature. This was already available on Android, and it’s now available on iOS devices. 

[7 Sep] Auto connecting YouTube Music iOS mobile app with other devices
If you’re listening to music on the YouTube app for Smart TVs & Gaming Consoles, your YouTube Music mobile app will now automatically connect to your device upon opening the app – as long as you’re signed into the same account and on the same WiFi network. Note: This experience won’t work if you’re playing music on multiple devices using the same network. This was already available on Android, and it’s now available on iOS devices. 

[7 Sep] Updated preview panel on CarPlay
You’ll see that it’s now easier to preview music under certain shelves on CarPlay by seeing images of tracks included in the mix (without having to click into it). Previously, listeners had to do several steps of browsing to find the right track and so, we changed this! You can also directly play items from this preview panel without having to browse any further.

[8 Aug] Improved genre shelves on Smart TVs & Gaming Consoles
If you listen to music on the YouTube Music for Smart TVs & Gaming Consoles, you may notice that we’ve re-organized the genre content on your Home feed by grouping them by higher quality genre categories. For instance, you may not see an “Asian music” shelf on Home anymore since content that would originally be on this shelf has been better organized (based on genre) into shelves like Indie & Chill, R&B and more. 

You can now learn more about charting music at an all new Music Charts. Music Charts are a great way for artists to get recognized and celebrate their success on YouTube with fans around the world. We launched our new Charts introducing the first ever Shorts music chart revealing the most popular daily and weekly music among Shorts creators in 13 countries around the world along with new “daily” Top Music videos on YouTube. And front and center on this Charts website is a new Charts featured carousel that spotlights artists who are shining on charts and shaping music culture in a big way. This new iteration of charts does not include location and artist insights but hope to bring these to you in the future! See for yourself if your favorite artists are on top of our new Shorts and Video Charts and discover new cool Charts features at go/youtube-charts.

You now have the option to share your top songs, videos, artists, and playlists on your channel. By default these stats are private but you can now make these public from the channel settings page in YouTube Music. When you switch your stats to public, anyone can view your public stats. Your public stats will show on your channel for up to two years, unless you hide them.  Read more about this at our Help Center. Already available on mobile & Smart TVs, this is now also available on Web. 

[29 Aug] Comments on mobile
You can now engage with the music community by posting comments on all music tracks (songs, videos & UGC) and podcast episodes in the YouTube Music App. This feature works cross-functionally with YouTube main app which means that all comments on YouTube Music will appear and be engageable (@mentions, likes, replies) on YouTube main and vice versa. You’ll notice a more modern, redesigned player page that accommodates this change with a new action row to surface common actions including comments.

[23 Aug] 2022 Summer recap
You can now also take a look back at the songs that defined your summer through Summer Recap, the latest installment of our personalized experience – following your Spring recap – that provides you with a recap of your top artists, songs, albums and playlists from the last season. You can find your Summer Recap, along with a personalized Summer Recap playlist, in the Your Recap page in the YouTube Music app.

Launched to all YouTube Music listeners.

If you’re into Podcasts, you’ll be happy to learn that you can now add an RSS feed based podcast to your library for private consumption. To access this feature, head to Library > Podcasts > ‘Add Podcast’ and add the url to the text box! This was a top requested feature from Google Podcasts listeners, and we’re happy we could bring it to YouTube Music as well. 

If you enjoy listening to Podcast episodes on YouTube Music, you’ll be happy to know that you can now set up auto-downloads for new  episodes from shows that you’ve added to your library. Once you turn on auto downloads from Settings on your device, the most recent episodes and subsequent new episodes will automatically download to the same device. Note: These will expire in 30 days. 

If you’ve listened to a podcast in the last 30 days, you can now get push notifications for personalized episode recommendations based on your Podcasts listening habits. These notifications will cover new episodes for shows you’ve subscribed to, but this doesn’t mean that you’ll see a notification for every new episode! To use this feature, you’ll have to opt-in for podcasts notifications in Settings.

Following our launch of Podcasts in the YouTube Music app in the United States & Canada & Latin America, those of you in Europe & Asia markets can now enjoy your favorite podcasts shows on YouTube Music as well! To remind you, you can enjoy podcasts on-demand, offline, in the background, while casting and seamlessly switch between audio-video versions as well. This podcast listening experience is different from our music listening experience where you need a Premium or Music Premium subscription to enjoy some of these features. More here. 

If you’re a Premium member listening to music on the YouTube app for Smart TVs & Gaming Consoles, you now have the option to enjoy synced, karaoke-style lyrics when playing music as well. Timed lyrics are turned off by default, but you can turn them on easily by Selecting Display > Lyrics. Unlike the experience on mobile, you cannot scroll or tap-to-seek lyrics on Smart Tvs. Note that timed lyrics availability is limited to art track videos on Smart TVs.

[18 Aug] Timed lyrics on mobile
You’ll notice that lyrics on YouTube Music also got a big upgrade and you can now enjoy synced karaoke-style lyrics when listening to music on the mobile app. You can also scroll or tap-to-seek with a refreshed UI in the lyrics tab. Improving lyrics on YouTube Music has been a top request this year and we’re happy to bring this to our listeners!

[17 Aug] Song details shelf on Related Tab
If you frequent the related tab quite often when listening to music, you’ll see a new song details tab that shows information based on the track’s metadata like album, artist, track, album thumbnail, views, release year and  likes.

[16 Aug] ‘Includes Paid Promotion’ sign on mobile
When watching videos on the YouTube Music mobile app, you may notice that some videos may have ‘Includes Paid Promotion’ indicator, at the top of the player. This will show up for all videos that displayed the paid promo banner on YouTube main, and pulls automatically from there. To remind you, a creator or artist uploading a video to YouTube has the option to disclose paid promotion to their audience if their content includes paid product placements, endorsements, or sponsorships. More at the Help Center.