YouTube Music adds personalized ‘Recommended radios’ influenced by multiple artists [U]

Abner Li | Jun 17 2022 - 9:06 am PT

In addition to a new “Add to playlist” UI for mobile, YouTube Music is testing “Recommended radios.” Compared to radio stations generated from a single song, this new offering looks to be compiled from multiple influences.

Update 6/17: After testing at the start of this year, the Recommended radios shelf is seeing wider availability over the past day on mobile and the web.

Some, like “Instrumental Radio,” do not include any artists with blank waveform cover art leveraged. Ten suggestions are shown in the carousel.

Original 1/30: For those seeing this feature, going through the Home tab will reveal a new “Recommend radios” carousel. It requires a bit of scrolling and is positioned about halfway down the feed. You get 10 radios with a waveform cover art style that features the YT Music logo in the top-left corner. They change on every feed refresh. What looks to be the primary inspiration for the station is shown at the center, and there can be up to three.

These radio stations are named after either a single band or genre, and are sometimes accompanied by a decade (e.g. 2000s, 2020s) or other descriptions (“Deep cuts”). YouTube Music also previews what other artists are included below.

For example, “Pop Radio • Deep cuts” features Concorde, Vampire Weekend, and Mr Little Jeans. On mobile, tapping opens the playlist page (instead of auto-playing), with the description noting how this is “Endless music customized for you. Always updating.” You have the option to “Add to library” and download for offline listening, while there are around 100 songs in all.

YouTube Music users started seeing Recommended radios this weekend, but it’s not yet widely rolled out.