Press play on these new YouTube Music updates
YouTube Music announced new features including Ask Music for conversational exploration of songs and podcasts, and a personalized AI-audio guide for weekly recommendations, rolling out to Premium subscribers globally.
YouTube Music introduced Ask Music, a conversational tool integrated into the app that allows users to explore over 300 million songs and podcasts through voice interaction. The feature supports official recordings, remixes, live performances, covers, and DJ sets, enabling hands-free control of playback and deeper artist exploration. Users can customize playlists or dive into artist backgrounds without leaving the app.
A new personalized AI-audio guide will provide Premium subscribers with a weekly spoken preview of recommended podcasts, explaining why each show aligns with their interests before playback begins. The guide operates hands-free and eyes-free, offering a quick, automated rundown of curated content. This update aims to simplify discovery by highlighting shows users may not have encountered otherwise.
The updates follow data showing YouTube Music users discovered new artists over 450 million times in July 2026, prompting the company to enhance exploration tools. The improvements are designed to make finding new music and podcasts more intuitive within the existing app interface. Both features are part of a broader push to integrate discovery tools directly into the listening experience.
The new features will be available to YouTube Music and Premium subscribers worldwide in the coming weeks. The rollout includes Ask Music for interactive exploration and the AI-audio guide for podcast recommendations, reinforcing the app’s focus on personalized and accessible content discovery.