YouTube Music gets hashtag pages, less repetition in radios, playlist cards, and more

Abner Li | Dec 16 2022 - 3:45 am PT

The YouTube Music recap of what launched in the past two months is here with a handful of new additions that haven’t been widely noticed yet, like hashtag pages.

Instead of being taken to YouTube Music search results, tapping on hashtags will now open a landing page that shows you those tagged — either in the title or description — videos and playlists.

Note that not all hashtags will take you to these landing pages, clicking on: prohibited hashtags will show an error message, low quality hashtags will take you to search results and standard, generic hashtags will take you to the YouTube Music home page.

In November, Google changed how YouTube Music nominates “song radio candidates” so that you get a “more diverse set of videos” and “less repeated content.”

All mixes, including the new one for Christmas, now use dynamic art so that you get a preview of what artists are in a collection before opening.

Those joining YouTube Music get a new onboarding experience that lets them search for favorite artists instead of only being able to choose from a grid. Similarly, a “First playlist” collection walks them through that creation process.

Google confirmed the existence of a new playlist (or container) card that can appear in the Home feed. This can replace curated playlist shelves, and directly lists the first three songs with a row of buttons at the bottom to start playback and save.

The updated Now Playing screen that hides the thumbs down is also now official, though YouTube Music says the redesign is rolled out for iOS and we’ve yet to encounter it on the iPhone. There’s also “single tap to cast” this month, which is the button that appears directly on album artwork.