YouTube Music / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- YouTube Music is 10, and it’s introducing new features.
- Taste Match will work just like Spotify Blend.
- The music streaming service has more than 300 million tracks.
YouTube Music is 10, and it’s dropping some new features to celebrate.
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In a blog post about its 10th birthday, YouTube revealed some new features and shared statistics about the platform’s success.
Taste Match
First up is Taste Match — a feature that sounds a lot like Spotify Blend. YouTube says this feature is an easy way to connect with other users over shared music tastes and discover new songs. When users join a Taste Match playlist, they’ll see a daily playlist of songs based on the shared interests of everyone who has joined. If you’re the type of person who likes exploring new music but wants to stay in the genres you enjoy, this is a fantastic way to see what else is out there.
Other new features
Also on the way is:
- Notifications to let you know about upcoming releases from your favorite artists, new merch drops, event announcements, and more.
- Alerts about upcoming local concerts when you watch artist Shorts or visit an artist’s channel.
- Badges like “First to Watch” and “Top Listener” to let supporters showcase their loyalty.
- Milestone markers on official artist videos that are nearing major view counts like 100,000, 1 million, or 1 billion to let fans help artists hit milestones.
- The ability to leave comments directly on albums and playlists.
YouTube Music has seen quite a bit of innovation over the past 12 months as it tries to keep up with its competition. It rolled out cross-device sync playback controls, lyric sharing, a “consistent volume” setting to make sure every song plays at the same level, and a digital DJ feature to build custom playlists on demand.
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The music streaming service has more than 300 million tracks in its catalog, the company says (for comparison, Spotify advertises “more than 100 million”), and people have created more than 4 billion playlists — nearly half of those public.
