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YouTube Music may take some inspiration from Spotify, one of its main rivals, by adding a playlist upvoting feature. This would allow you to rate your favorite playlists instead of just saving them.
To be fair, while Spotify had the option to upvote playlists for a long time, it is no longer available today. In one of its biggest UI tweaks, the company replaced the like count with a “saved” count. Before that, Spotify playlists showed the number of upvotes they had received. That said, the YouTube Music approach would offer more options.
YouTube Music’s potential “playlist upvoting” feature would be customizable
The potential new feature was spotted by Android Authority in the latest YouTube Music app update for Android (v7.05.52). According to the report, the app’s source code now includes strings with direct mentions of the playlist upvoting feature. For example, a string mentions “playlist_voting_collaborators_only.” This string suggests that the music streaming service will be more customizable than Spotify was with respect to upvoting playlists.
More specifically, it is said that the playlist creators can choose who will vote. They can open the vote to collaborators on that playlist, everyone, or no one. It is not yet known when this feature will be available. However, the source claims that the necessary source code already appears to be implemented. So, the YouTube Music team could enable the feature at any time without prior notice.
The potential playlist upvoting feature would be useful to measure the popularity of playlists on YouTube Music. Currently, there is no parameter that allows you to check this. The closest thing would be to see the number of likes that the songs have within the playlist. However, it is not a very practical method.
Lastly, it is possible that the number of upvotes affects the positioning of playlists in search results. After all, that’s usually the case with individual songs (and YouTube videos).