Google’s list of YouTube Music updates for February and March is now available, and it contains some important additions such as the radio algorithm.
“We’ve already covered the revised Add to Playlist UI, the web song/video switcher, Snapchat connection (albeit sharing artist pages is a new feature), Save to queue, and the Explore shelf, which replaces the dedicated tab.”
According to YouTube Music, the back-end logic that nominates the music that shows up in Song Radio and playlist auto mixes has been changed to boost artist variety in these playlists.
“We’ve seen an increase in likes and song discovery from these playlists since making these adjustments, and our teams are excited to continue to improve this experience for all of you in the future.”
Selecting a song from the search results will only play that music, rather than creating a radio station. Users can still use the Up Next queue to activate Autoplay.
Meanwhile, YouTube Music has “restricted Family listening to a new family shelf,” which includes a personalized Family Mix (favorites and new songs) as well as the following playlists:
YouTube Music emphasized that if users usually listen to music that is appropriate for a family, their home feed will have a ‘For the Family’ shelf with the Family mix as the first playlist available.
On the subject of shelves, YouTube Music’s Listen Again shelf for smart televisions and gaming consoles will no longer show duplicates and will have an “increased number of results.”
Finally, instead of being limited to ordered play and playlist shuffles, the YouTube Music Wear OS software now allows you to shuffle play all of your downloaded music.