Ask Music” is the name of the AI prompt-based conversational radio in YouTube Music, and it’s seeing wider availability, including internationally, in recent weeks.
The feature appears as a purple card in the Home feed, like Create a radio or the banner advertising the availability of the June – August 2024 recap. Tapping launches a fullscreen chat UI with accepted prompts ranging from a few words — 80s inspired indie, Dreamy synthpop, Saddest songs, etc. — to sentences.
After a few seconds, you get a playlist card with YTM translating that query into a shorter title and longer description. It auto-plays the first track by default with the ability to save to your library, and provide feedback.
AI controlled music is legit a cool idea, just thumbs up or down the song it played to change it and show me new cool stuff.
Except Google.
Wanted to see how bad were the recommendations, it can’t play anything if it’s not in focus with the screen on. For a music app that plays 30 seconds of ads before any listening?? (Ironically enough, even the ads stop playing if focus is lost or screen is off)
Now I remember why years ago i uninstalled that system app via adb on my pixel
Like most people who use YouTube Music, I was grandfathered in after Google Music shut down and have YouTube premium bundled with it.
So with that, it absolutely plays when not in focus and has no ads.
That said, it absolutely is just recommending the same old things that usually show up on my playlists.
Cool! Yet another way to have Google loop the same 20 songs tangentially related to the artist I searched for without actually playing the artist I searched for.
Is this what Google thinks people want than stuff like editing Playlist covers, removal of Samples, et al? I want my music player to be lean and simple, not a boggy useless mess.
Arse music.
