YouTube Music is leaning more into the video aspect with a vertical scrolling feed similar to TikTok or its own YouTube Shorts.
YouTube Samples showed up Tuesday on the iOS and Android app versions of the service. Each clip includes a look at the artist, the video and the feel of the song, the company said.
Similar to TikTok or YouTube Shorts, these are short-form music videos that you quickly scroll through. The point isn’t to create another social network, but to help users find new music they might like.
It’s taking the mobile vertical feed popularized by so many other social media networks and applying to one of the key problems of music services — finding new songs you might within a vast library of content.
“Powered by the world’s largest catalog of music videos, this personalized feed will explore the depths and breadth of the YouTube Music library so that there’s always something new to listen to, whether it’s the latest release from an up-and-coming artist or a deep cut from a legacy artist we just think you’d really like,” the company said in a blog post.
Samples is designed to be “the appetizer to the whole meal,” so presumably you wouldn’t want to live in the feed, which is what some users do with TikTok and Shorts.
The company said it will look at other ways to incorporate short-form discovery into the YouTube Music service.