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AI-curated, personalized YouTube Music mixes are now rolling out worldwide in Google’s challenge to Spotify’s streaming dominance. This would be the same feature that YouTube Music soft-launched late last month. The addition to the streaming service comes as part of a larger functionality update. Well, not that much larger, mind you. Because these personalized mixes are the main component of the new activity bar that’s now rolling out globally.
Following the change, you should see some half a dozen new “My Mix” playlists under the app’s Home tab. Up to seven of those, to be specific. But the actual number will primarily depend on your past usage patterns.
The mixes themselves are completely dynamic and will change as you keep using YouTube Music. Every one of the aforementioned playlists seeks to deliver a distinct listening experience, YouTube says. Which is pretty much PR speak for “the playlists will revolve around individual music genres.” Or a small number of closely related ones, at least. With that said, even highly specific mixes will be aiming to deliver a wide variety of content; i.e. music from countless artists and numerous time periods. The actual order of the curated content will strive to stick to a “cohesive sonic theme,” however.
Can personalized YouTube Music mixes, alone, reinvigorate Google’s streaming service?
Of course, all of those mixes based on themes such as moods, workout plans, and seasonal events will change daily. The overall service is, in fact, so close to Spotify’s Daily Mixes that it’s surprising YouTube even bothered coming up with a different name. Expect some extra Google Assistant functionality revolving around this Android app update, as well.
Furthermore, YouTube’s Monday announcement also confirms the rebranding of the “Your Mix” functionality into “My Supermix.” The all-inclusive option obviously bundles all of the newly introduced tracklists. What’s less obvious is whether these personalized YouTube Music mixes will be enough to reinvigorate Google’s streaming service.
Originally launched in late 2015, it wasn’t until a year ago that YouTube Music became Google’s sole audio streaming platform. Before that, Alphabet’s subsidiary also ran a largely redundant service in Google Play Music. The fact that no official user number has been disclosed to date also tells us plenty about how YouTube Music has been doing since its inception. Whether that changes in the near future remains to be seen, though copying its number one rival probably isn’t the worst strategy for a company the size of Google. Especially given how overdue these playlist improvements actually were.