YouTube announced at the Made On YouTube event that it will add new AI-powered discovery tools to YouTube Music intended to help listeners find music, explore artists, and discover podcasts they might otherwise miss.
Ask Music: conversational search and custom queues
"Ask Music" is a conversation-style feature built directly into the YouTube Music app that lets users describe in everyday language what they want to hear instead of searching for particular songs or artists. The tool operates across YouTube Music’s catalog of more than 300 million tracks, including official recordings, remixes, live performances, covers, and DJ sets.
Users can employ Ask Music to build custom listening queues, investigate an artist’s inspirations, or delve into music-history details. YouTube explains that rather than typing specific search terms, a user can pose a request as if asking a friend — for example, asking for a mix based on songs that inspired a particular track, or querying who played bass on a given song.
Your Podcast Lineup: weekly AI-generated audio previews
"Your Podcast Lineup" is a personalized, AI-generated audio guide for podcast discovery. The feature targets the common problem that there are far more podcasts available than most listeners can follow, and even people with an existing list of favorites can struggle to keep up with new episodes or find new shows.
Your Podcast Lineup will appear on the podcast page within the YouTube Music app. Each week it will present a short spoken preview of recommended shows and explain why those shows might appeal to the listener, then move directly into suggested episodes.
Broader context and rollout
The new features fit into YouTube’s broader push to integrate AI across its services. Last year, YouTube experimented with AI-powered music hosts that provided stories, fan trivia, and commentary related to what users were listening to. Spotify has recently followed a similar path with an AI-driven personal podcasts feature that generates episodes based on users’ interests and prompts.
Both Ask Music and Your Podcast Lineup are scheduled to roll out soon to YouTube Music and YouTube Premium subscribers worldwide.
