YouTube celebrates the YouTube Music app for 10 years on Thursday, launching new features that will bring you closer to Rival Spotify and more. The app now includes the Taste Match playlist, a playlist that combines the overlapping interests of multiple users, similar to Spotify Blend. The app will also launch notifications to users of upcoming releases, marches and concerts, and partner with Bandsintown to help fans discover concerts when they watch videos and shorts on YouTube itself.
This addition will help YouTube keep up with Spotify in some areas, but other areas, such as adding badges and supporting comments, will extend YouTube's social networking capabilities to music services.
The company also shares new statistics on YouTube Music's catalogue, noting that there are currently more than 300 million tracks, including studio recordings, live performances, remixes and covers. Spotify promotes catalogs of over 100 million trucks for comparison. Furthermore, according to YouTube, the music service offers over 4 billion music-centric user-generated playlists, of which 1.8 billion are available.
The new Taste Match playlist allows YouTube music users to combine their interests into a single playlist that updates daily, featuring tracks based on the music preferences of everyone involved.
Image credits: YouTube
Additionally, YouTube music users can listen to the social experience by leaving a comment directly on albums and playlists. Fans can earn loyalty badges such as “see first” and “top listeners.” Meanwhile, artists and bands can tackle music video watch milestones, including 100,000 views, 1 million views, and even 1 billion views.
YouTube's music service continues to grow, with more than 125 million users in February 2024, combining YouTube Music and YouTube Premium, bringing it to over 125 million, including exams.
We are constantly aiming to evolve and you can help us by providing insights into TechCrunch and your perspective and feedback on our coverage and events! Fill in this research to let us know how we are doing and get the opportunity to win an award in return!
TechCrunch Events
San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025