This Thursday, YouTube is marking a decade of its YouTube Music app with the launch of exciting new features designed to enhance user experience and bring it in line with competitors like Spotify. Among the highlights are the innovative “Taste Match” playlists, which curate tracks based on the musical preferences of multiple users, similar to Spotify’s Blend. Additionally, the app will now keep users updated on upcoming releases, merchandise, and concerts, partnering with Bandsintown to help fans discover live events while enjoying videos and Shorts on YouTube.
These enhancements aim to narrow the gap between YouTube Music and Spotify, while features like badges and commenting capabilities will further enrich the social aspect of YouTube’s music service.
YouTube also unveiled impressive statistics about its music catalog, boasting over 300 million tracks, which include studio recordings, live performances, remixes, and covers. In contrast, Spotify highlights a catalog of over 100 million tracks. Additionally, YouTube Music offers a staggering 4 billion user-generated playlists, with 1.8 billion of those being public.
With the new Taste Match playlists, users can seamlessly merge their musical tastes into a single, dynamically updating playlist that refreshes daily, showcasing tracks curated from all participants.
Furthermore, YouTube Music users can now comment on albums and playlists, fostering a more interactive listening experience. Fans will also have the opportunity to earn loyalty badges such as “First to Watch” or “Top Listener”, with more badges on the horizon. Artists will be able to celebrate significant milestones for their music videos, reaching view counts of 100,000, 1 million, or even 1 billion views.
YouTube Music continues to thrive, skyrocketing from 100 million users in February 2024 to over 125 million across both YouTube Music and YouTube Premium by March 2025, including trial users.
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