YouTube Music is adding flexibility to its relatively fresh AI “radio” feature. You can now tune your “Ask Music” stations to align better with your interests. This is just one of the new features coming to iOS.
First introduced last year as a quasi-alternative to Spotify’s AI Playlist feature, “Ask Music” lets you create custom playlists or “radio” stations by typing or speaking what you’d like to hear.
From there, YouTube Music will generate playlists based on moods, genres, activities, or descriptions. You can save the generated playlists to your library.
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Now, there are also follow-up prompts. For example, using Ask Music, I’m looking for “fun songs for a Wednesday afternoon.” Follow-up prompts include “only pop stars,” “energetic indie rock,” and more.
Currently, Ask Music is limited to YouTube Music Premium users on Android and iOS in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland.
As noted by 9to5Google, YouTube Music is also introducing new “My Mix” titles generated by Gemini, Google’s AI assistant. These titles aim to capture the overall mood of personalized playlists better. Previously, these mixes were only identified by numbers. With this upgrade, they will now have more descriptive names that reflect the genre and artists included in each blend.
“My Mix” is available exclusively to YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium subscribers, in the U.S. only. Its algorithmically generated playlists are tailored to individual music tastes, drawing from users’ listening history, liked songs, and overall activity within YouTube Music.
Finally, YouTube Music is expanding the topics that are available when you use AI to generate custom playlist artwork. Workout and Instruments themes have been added to Colors, Cycles, Travel, Moods, Nature, Animals, Landscapes, Food and Drinks, and Fantasy.
The music streaming market in the U.S. is primarily dominated by Spotify and Apple Music, with Amazon Music and YouTube Music following closely behind. YouTube Music, in particular, is gaining popularity due to its unique combination of music and music videos. It’s encouraging to see new features being added to the service.