YouTube Music has introduced an artificial intelligence-powered playlist generator for Premium subscribers on iOS and Android devices.
The feature, announced via an X post, is accessible through the Library tab’s “New” button. It lets subscribers generate playlists by describing their preferences. Users can input requests via text or voice prompts.
The launch makes YouTube Music the latest to offer the feature as rivals Spotify, Amazon Music and Deezer have already rolled out the same tool in recent years. In December, Spotify launched a new feature that lets users enter text prompts to build personalized playlists, over a year after it rolled out an AI Playlist tool in beta.
For YouTube Music, the timing comes amid the company’s plan to enhance its Premium subscription offering. The company recently began limiting song lyrics access for free users on the YouTube Music app, according to 9to5Google. YouTube Music told TechCrunch that the restriction is an experiment affecting “a small percentage of ad-supported users,” and that lyrics remain available to most free users.
As MBW reported recently, YouTube Music has become one of the main growth drivers for Alphabet, with YouTube’s subscription business — spanning YouTube Music, YouTube Premium, YouTube TV and NFL Sunday Ticket — now generating about $20 billion annually.
Google‘s subscription services have shown growth, with the company reporting 325 million paying users across Google One and YouTube Premium in Q4 2025.
During the company’s recent earnings call, Alphabet Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler said: “When a user shifts from being an ad-supported user to a YouTube Music and Premium customer, it has a slightly negative impact on YouTube ads revenues, but a positive impact on our business. And we had strong revenue growth in YouTube subscriptions this quarter, particularly in the YouTube Music and premium category.”
Alphabet CFO Anat Ashkenazi attributed the jump in revenues for subscription platforms and devices to “increased demand for AI plans.”
Executives also highlighted that “AI is transforming the YouTube experience for both creators and viewers.” Over 1 million channels on YouTube, on average, used the platform’s new AI creation tools every day in December, according to the recent earnings call.
The new AI playlist generator follows YouTube’s September launch of an experimental AI-powered music commentary feature through its new YouTube Labs program, a move seen as a challenger to Spotify’s AI DJ that was launched two years ago.
YouTube’s “AI music host” adds an AI voice commentary between songs on playlists. It shares relevant stories, fan trivia and commentary about the music that’s playing on the YouTube Music app. The AI host injects commentary between tracks that users have selected instead of building a new playlist.
In 2024, YouTube Music started testing an AI-generated radio feature and added a song recognition tool that lets users search songs by sound such as by humming, singing or playing a tune. This feature builds on Alphabet’s MusicLM, an ‘experimental AI’ tool unveiled in 2023 that can generate high-fidelity music from text prompts and humming.
Also in 2023, YouTube Music launched an experimental feature that allowed users to create personalized playlist art using AI.
Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently hinted at the company’s plans to beef up its AI investments in 2026. “To meet customer demand and capitalize on the growing opportunities we have ahead of us, our 2026 CapEx investments are anticipated to be in the range of $175 to $185 billion.”
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