Comments might be coming to YouTube Music

Abner Li | Jul 6 2023 - 3:35 pm PT

YouTube Music just rolled out a new miniplayer and is testing a Now Playing redesign that now looks to be home to a comments section.

Some users are seeing a comments chip between the thumbs up/down and Save options in the new actions carousel. It notes how many comments have been left and presumably opens a UI similar to the main YouTube app. This approach shouldn’t be too obtrusive, as users have to manually open comments.

They appear on both user-created and officially uploaded videos as well as the automatically generated music/song videos known as “Art Tracks.” Basically, every regular song you see on YouTube Music has a square video option that just shows artwork when “watched” on YouTube. In this case, whether you can comment on a song is at the discretion of the artist’s channel.

Credit: u/BlazeCrafter420

Being able to discuss music is pretty clever and has long been possible in the main YouTube client. Bringing this to YouTube Music will popularize the capability and could give the service something unique compared to Spotify and Apple Music, which would have to commit resources to handle comment moderation before launching a similar capability. It could make YouTube Music the place to discuss songs with other fans. (I’m personally thinking of threads dedicated to interpreting lyrics.) It could also help YouTube Music’s podcasting ambitions.

YouTube Music comments are not yet widely rolled out, though Now Playing is seeing wider availability.

Meanwhile, I’m slowly getting used to the miniplayer on Android, though I keep opening the Cast menu when I just want to play/pause. The left/right swipe capability is indeed nice, but I still occasionally find myself swiping down, which I did previously as a hard stop. I’ve mostly made my peace with no longer being able to remove the queue, but that’s mostly out of not wanting to swipe 25+ songs manually.