Following the rollout of a redesigned Now Playing, the YouTube Music team has now detailed what features it launched in June and July of 2023, including how it replaced some video versions of songs in playlists.
The vast YouTube library is one of YouTube Music’s strengths, with covers, live recordings, and other alternates. In June, YouTube Music replaced some video versions of songs for the official release in user playlists. This has been an unpopular change as remixes, instrumentals, and other takes are meaningfully different from the original.
We did this with the intention of giving you a more premium experience listening to official audio versions of videos, especially for playlists that are created by other listeners.
Google is aware of “bad swaps” and is “working on fixing these issues with quality.”
Some things being considered include swapping back to the original video via the a/v switcher in the event of a wrong swap, as well as adding a playlist-level setting to disable this feature on specific playlists. We also noticed some of you complain that explicit versions of songs are being wrongly swapped with clean versions – this should not be happening. If you’re experiencing this, do share feedback with us along with a link to the playlist. This will help the team investigate the issue further!
There are also quite a few additions to the YTM experience on smart TVs and gaming consoles.
If you’re listening to music on the YouTube app for Smart TVs & Gaming Consoles, your YouTube Music mobile app will now automatically connect to your device upon opening the app – as long as you’re signed into the same account and on the same WiFi network. Note: This experience won’t work if you’re playing music on multiple devices using the same network.
Google has also added the following shelves on those devices: Covers and remixes, Listen again, New releases & live performances, and Recommended albums.
Similarly, “When casting from the YouTube Music app, you’ll be taken to the same song within the already running YouTube main app (without reloading it!). With this change, you will still be able to use your TV remote to browse non-YouTube Music content when connected to YouTube Music on your mobile device. This non-music content will show up in the player page and queue, but won’t be added to your YouTube Music history. When you disconnect the YouTube Music app, this non-music content will be removed from your music queue.”
Other changes include a landscape mode for the Android app (where the miniplayer looks weird), “Pronouns on artist detail pages” (opt-in for musicians), and “Ability to search for user profiles” (if listener profile has stats sharing enabled).
The YouTube Music team also confirmed the launch of:
- Miniplayer redesign
- Podcasts in North and South America
- Web redesign with save queue to playlist
- Sticky add-to-playlist behavior
- Browsing in the Wear OS app
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