YouTube Music profiles will let you make your listening stats public

Abner Li | Apr 26 2023 - 3:50 pm PT

Viewing the profiles/channels of non-artist users in YouTube Music today shows playlists that are set to public. In what could be a bid to make YouTube Music more social, you’re getting the option to make your listening stats public.

At the moment, opening “Your channel” (from the profile picture in the top-right corner) will show songs, artists, playlists, and videos that you’ve had “on repeat” in recent (seven) days. YouTube Music notes how many plays or how long you’ve listened to something.

Those four stats are currently private, but you now have the option to make them public and visible to anyone viewing your channel/profile in YouTube Music. This will join any public playlists on your profile.

To access the “Enable public stats” toggle, open YouTube Music settings and navigate to “Privacy & location” where you’ll find “Channel Settings.” Under “Advanced privacy settings,” you can individually control:

Show songs on repeat
Show artists on repeat
Show music videos on repeat: Only public videos are visible
Show playlists on repeat: Only public playlists are visible

By enabling public stats, you permit us to use your watch history across all YouTube services to display stats about the content that you’ve consumed recently. New stats that we introduce in the future will be turned off by default.

Your public stats will be displayed on your channel for up to 2 years. Disabling the setting will remove Public Stats from your channel.

Links to the help articles for this feature are not yet live, and YouTube has not yet announced or promoted it yet. It’s not clear if this capability is fully live.

In all, this could make YouTube Music a bit more social. The service already highlights public playlists from other people, and stats could be combined with a “following” feature to help you decide whether to subscribe to a non-artist user.