YouTube Music is bringing a song detection tool and a conversational AI that will allow people to find songs by playing song out loud or humming and create their own playlists with prompts describing the kinds of songs they want to hear. This is actually a competitive game changer for them against other incumbent streaming services like Spotify, Amazon Music, and Deezer.
Song recognition has actually been around for a long time now, and personally, I find it very useful when I need to find the title or singer of a song. Many of us have been using this feature on Shazam for many years, so much so that "shazam" has become somewhat of a verb, meaning to search for a song by playing it. What you can't do on Shazam, though, is hum a song and have it give useful results.
Song recognition isn't something I have seen Spotify do, as far as I know, and I haven't seen other audio streaming services pursue adding such a feature. And that might very well reel more people onto YouTube Music and encourage them to use it a lot more, especially with the conversational AI that is coming on board.
YouTube Music is also experimenting with an AI-generated radio feature that will only be available to premium users in the U.S. Rather than putting together your own playlist yourself, you could create custom radio stations by describing them with a prompt to the AI and tailoring the listening experience for yourself.
For example, you could ask for "relaxing blues tunes," and the AI will come up with a line-up that fits your request. Given that the AI will have access to your listening history, it may be able to determine which songs better suit your preferences. I personally would find this feature very useful, as I tend to want to listen to playlists with certain types of moods at different times, and some songs just don't fit.
It is rather interesting to see Spotify trying to become a little more like YouTube by introducing music videos and video podcasts, and then YouTube music becoming more like Spotify by trying to appeal to people who just want to listen. And YouTube is introducing these features that could make them stand out and attract more people to stay.
For now, these features will only roll out to premium users in the U.S. And even at that, not every premium member will actually have access to them. What they are trying to do is release and test with a smaller number of people to get feedback and reiterate the product to ensure it truly works and see how it is received by users.
Bringing Shazam-like features with a little more to offer and introducing a conversational AI to help curate more appealing radios is a step that could bring more traction to YouTube Music.
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