YouTube gets prominent shortcut for opening songs/videos in YouTube Music

Abner Li | May 13 2022 - 11:32 am PT

Since 2019, the main YouTube app has offered to open song videos in YouTube Music, but this integration is now getting much more prominent.

When you’re listening to a song in the main YouTube app, there’s now a YouTube Music icon directly in the player window. This is the service’s full logo and is notably not converted into an outline. (Update: The icon is white for some users.) It appears just left of the autoplay switch and stands out a great deal.

Tapping opens YouTube Music to that song, though your playback position is not retained, and the song will start from the beginning. As seen in the below screenshot, the new button coexists with the “Want audio only?” prompt below the video window.

Meanwhile, you can also access this capability at the bottom of the overflow menu: “Listen with YouTube Music.” It’s somewhat amusing that there are now three different promotions, but it remains to be seen which one actually catches people’s attention. Of the three, the blue open button is the most visually distracting and not really integrated.

We’re seeing this change widely rolled out in YouTube for Android today.