YouTube Music debuts a new vertical video feed focused on music discovery, ‘Samples,’ a ‘one-tap way’ to discover new music through clips.
YouTube has announced the latest feature in the YouTube Music app, a TikTok-like vertical video feed called Samples, described as a “one-tap way” to quickly sample and find new music.
Samples appear in a new tab at the bottom of the app, alongside the home feed, your library, and the explore section. Tapping the Samples icon starts a short 30-second video clip of a song YouTube Music thinks you’ll enjoy based on your taste profile, focusing on artists you like and related artists you may not have heard.
The clips found in Samples are only 30 seconds long, which gives you an idea of whether or not that song is for you. If you dislike a song, simply swipe up to switch to another sample.
Tap the thumbs-up icon on any Sample to save the song to your Liked Songs playlist or any playlist you’ve created, making it easy to sample and save songs to check out further. For any Sample you enjoy enough to want to hear in full, tap the Play button in the corner of the screen.
A Shorts button also takes you into the main YouTube app, showing you any Shorts clips created with the sampled audio and enabling you to jump right into making your own Shorts using that song. There’s also a host of other features you might expect, like a share button, the ability to start a continuous radio station from a clip or check out the artist’s page to find more music.
YouTube Music offers multiple ways to discover new music tuned to your listening tendencies, such as a Supermix playlist incorporating songs and artists across your listening profile. Similarly, the Discover playlist offers songs you might enjoy based on your listening history.
According to YouTube Music product manager Gregor Dodson, Samples serve as a marriage between the Discover and Supermix playlists, pulling clips you haven’t watched before while focusing on artists with whom you might already be familiar.
“Short-form video and the infinite scroll have really interesting applications in music discovery,” says Dodson. “It’s a simple way to discover new music, but it’s not the end of the journey — it’s just the start of finding a new artist or song.”
The Samples feature is rolling out globally starting today on the YouTube Music app for both Android and iOS.
