YouTube Music gets more conversational with new AI features

YouTube is adding new AI-powered features to YouTube Music that aim to make it easier for listeners to discover music, explore artists, and find podcasts they may otherwise miss.

Announced at this year’s Made On YouTube event, the updates include “Ask Music,” a conversational tool for music and podcasts, and “Your Podcast Lineup,” a personalized audio guide designed to help listeners discover new shows.

Built directly into the YouTube Music app, Ask Music lets users describe what they want to hear in everyday language rather than searching for individual songs or artists. The feature works across YouTube Music’s catalog of more than 300 million songs, including official recordings, remixes, live performances, covers, and DJ sets. Users can use it to build custom listening queues, explore an artist’s motivations, or dig deeper into music history.

YouTube explains that, instead of manually searching, the user simply types the request as if they were asking a friend. For instance, someone could ask Ask Music to create a mix based on the tracks that inspired a particular song. Users can also ask other questions, such as who played bass on a particular song or other details about its creation.