YouTube Music said on Monday that it is releasing “Samples,” a TikTok-style short-form tailored video feed. Each clip in the feed shows the artist, music video, and feel of a recommended song. The new Samples stream lets users swipe vertically to discover songs and music videos, like TikTok and other copycat short-form video feeds.
In an interview with TechCrunch, YouTube product management director Brandon Bilinski said viewers are discovering more music through short-form video.
Bilinski added, “One of the biggest insights we’ve seen over the past couple of years is that all users but especially younger users are discovering more and more music through short-form video.” “Friends and family always come first. People usually say friends and family find music, but short-form video has recently been a close second. We leveraged that understanding to create a discovery-focused, short-form music video experience.
The Samples feed uses YouTube’s official music videos and live footage. Instead than just swiping through songs, the feed encourages users to interact with them and click through to view music videos or live performances. YouTube Music is leveraging short-form video segments to promote long-form video content and help people discover new music.
Swiping through the feed lets users add a song to their collection, share it, create a playlist, visit the album website, start a radio station, or create a Short.
“The feed is sort of an all-encompassing collection of related music to your tastes,” Bilinski added. “Discovery is based on listening. If the user has diverse tastes, it’s quite diverse. We also wish to show you new content. Those who haven’t seen them will also view videos of music they’ve heard.
The stream is comparable to Spotify’s TikTok-style discovery feeds from earlier this year. The feeds combine audio and video to preview an album, playlist, or single. YouTube Music and Spotify’s feeds use visual discovery like TikTok.
Bilinski said YouTube Music is considering adding more video feeds, but it wants to start with a simple one first. YouTube Music wants to integrate short-form discovery into other aspects of the app and launch new experiences to make discovering new artists and their music easy.
The Samples tab is rolling out to YouTube Music subscribers worldwide on iOS and Android today.
English