In a bid to enhance its music discovery capabilities, YouTube Music has taken a page from the TikTok playbook with the launch of its new “Samples” feed.
Samples is a personalized short-form video feed similar to TikTok, offering users glimpses into recommended songs and artists. Each snippet within the feed provides a brief insight into the musician, the music video, and the essence of a suggested song, according to a blog post on Tuesday (August 15).
It follows Spotify’s launch of a similar feature called “Clips” back in March. Both Samples and Clips offer a vertical feed that look similar to how TikTok presents videos.
Much like TikTok and Clips, users can navigate through the Samples feed with a vertical swipe. Since TikTok introduced the world to its short-form vertical video format, tech giants have adopted this style including Meta, which integrated a TikTok-inspired feature called Reels on its Facebook and Instagram platforms.
Leaning on YouTube‘s vast catalog of official music videos and live performances, the Samples feed uses short video clips to attract users into exploring long-form video content.
However, differing from the usual act of swiping through countless tracks, this feed actively encourages user engagement, urging them to delve into full music videos or live performances by clicking through.
Essentially, YouTube Music uses these bite-sized video clips to drive the discovery of video content on YouTube, and helping users find fresh music.
“We didn’t build this experience to be a means to an end in itself, but instead to be the appetizer to a whole meal. We wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to dive deeper into the songs and artists you discover and love all without leaving YouTube Music.”
YouTube Music
“We didn’t build this experience to be a means to an end in itself, but instead to be the appetizer to a whole meal. We wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to dive deeper into the songs and artists you discover and love all without leaving YouTube Music,” YouTube Music said.
The Samples feature is positioned alongside the home feed, library, and explore section of the YouTube Music app. Each ‘Sample’ runs at up to 30 seconds long, according to Engadget.
“Powered by the world’s largest catalog of music videos, Samples will explore the depths and breadth of the YouTube Music library so that there’s always something new to listen to,” YouTube Music said.
Users can swipe up to switch to another song. While users interact with the feed, they can also add songs to their collection, share them, create playlists, explore album pages, start new radio stations, or generate “Shorts.”
Back in February, YouTube started spitting the share of advertising revenue between music rightsholders and creators of Shorts, often described as Alphabet’s answer to TikTok.
The launch of Samples could open up new revenue streams for rightsholders, although YouTube Music did not disclose whether it will employ the same revenue-sharing deal in the new feature.
For artists, the Samples tab presents an additional avenue to reach a wider audience and establish a YouTube community.
“This is yet another example of how YouTube’s unique combination of music videos, live performances, music premieres and Shorts inspires real, devoted fandom, which is the key to making our platform the best place for every artist and music fan,” the company said.
“Powered by the world’s largest catalog of music videos, Samples will explore the depths and breadth of the YouTube Music library so that there’s always something new to listen to.”
YouTube Music
The Samples tab started rolling out to YouTube Music users worldwide on iOS and Android platforms on Tuesday.
YouTube Music raised its monthly subscription price in the US last month to $10.99 from $9.99 in line with price adjustments made by YouTube.
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