[Fixed] YouTube Music’s homescreen recommendations are off today

Some YouTube Music users are seeing a very playlist-heavy homescreen today that feels generic and not very personalized.

Update: YouTube Music fixed this issue on Wednesday afternoon. Refresh to get back the old feed.

It starts with a playlist carousel for Energize, Commute, or one of the other mood filters. Listen again is fortunately in the second position to provide access to your history, but this is followed by five — in my case — playlist cards in a row for: Indie Anthems, Feelin’ Good in the ’80s, etc. It’s usually just one or two and never back-to-back like this.

You then get more playlist carousels. The issue here is that personalized recommendations that reflect what you’re previously listened to and other preferences — like “Similar to [artist]” — are not appearing until the bottom of the feed. Playlists that users might actually want, including Mixed for you, are nowhere near the top.

Meanwhile, sections that people frequently use, like Quick picks and Forgotten favorites, are at the bottom of this longer than usual feed.

It exposes the issue with having a core UI that is so algorithmic and non-customizable. YouTube Music’s Home feed usually does a good job of immediately surfacing something you want to listen to. My long-running feature request for YouTube Music would be being able to pin shelves like Listen again (which will eventually become Speed dial) and Quick picks to always be the first two things that appear when I open the app.

Again, that’s usually the case, but an errant sorting algorithm has clearly gone out today for what feels like a wide swath of users. Refreshing the homescreen on Android, iOS, and the web does not bring the feed that YouTube Music users are familiar with.

Something like this has happened in the past and will presumably be fixed, but until then I’m using the Library tab.