YouTube Music tests offering song suggestions inside playlists

Abner Li | Jul 21 2020 - 9:03 am PT

Besides offering a slew of its own, you can of course make your own playlists in YouTube Music. The experience has always been quite straightforward, but YouTube Music for Android is now offering “Suggestions” on which songs to add to playlists.

Update: Now official along with collaborative playlists.

At the bottom of every YouTube Music playlist is an “Add a song” button. This opens a standard search interface, but every tap saves the work. Google is now testing a “Suggestions” section at the bottom of playlists.

Seven songs are offered with album cover, title, and artist listed at the left, while the right features a convenient “add” button in place of the overflow menu. You can also “Refresh” results at the bottom of this screen.

So far, YouTube Music suggestions inside playlists are not widely rolled out, and do not appear on any Android or iOS device we checked this morning. It’s quite a smart addition that leverages YouTube’s recommendation algorithms to upgrade a classic feature that doesn’t see much innovation. Of course, your mileage might vary depending on how accurate the recommendations are.

The YouTube Music team will hopefully explain what the suggestions algorithm is looking for when making picks. Meanwhile, Google is also working on a collaboration feature for playlists.