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YouTube appears to have begun rolling out a new design and a revamped playlist view for its music streaming app, YouTube Music, to a limited number of users. Changes include a typical “Now Playing” list that looks like a regular audio player, and the ability to shuffle the queue of songs more easily in order to organize a custom playback list. Speaking of which, the shuffle algorithm also seems to have received some nifty improvements as well, according to the source. Nevertheless, the app’s home page looks the same with three tabs for Home, Trending, and Library. Beyond those details, there’s no word on what other features YouTube Music will adopt and when the revamped app will be rolled out to the general public, if at all.
A Reddit user using the handle ‘c2fifield’ has spotted the changes and shared a few images of the redesigned iteration of the service (see gallery below), though it is not clear whether the refresh will be part of Google’s bigger push to overhaul its music streaming business. The Reddit user claims, however, that the redesigned YouTube Music app looks to have gained some of the popular features of the Google Play Music service. Nonetheless, it’s really too early to anticipate what YouTube’s plans are for its music streaming app. Last July, Lyor Cohen, head of YouTube’s music department, confirmed that the company plans a merger with Google Play Music. Currently, Google is offering YouTube Red and Google Play Music as separate services, though users automatically get a free access to one service just by subscribing to the other, which often leads to confusion and an overlap of services. To address that, YouTube’s goal is to create a brand new service that will combine both YouTube Red and Google Play Music under one brand.
It remains to be seen when the merged service can be expected to launch and whether that service will be baked into YouTube Music. YouTube is currently in the process of looking into how it can unify YouTube Red and Google Play Music as a single offering, and more details can be expected soon, as the Google I/O conference is set to kick off this week.
