YouTube Music Tests a New “Add to Playlist” UI

YouTube Music gradually improves its user experience. While it didn’t feel as usable in the beginning, next to Spotify or Pandora, now it delivers more and more positive vibrations. As it’s playlist-based, many users prefer to form their playlists on their own. And now YouTube Music offers a new UI for adding music to playlists.

The old interface was similar to what Apple Music still features: a long column of playlists, plus the latest of them on top of the list. Below there was a button for creating a new playlist. It all felt so 2010s, especially next to the new updated UI. Now it rather resembles Spotify.

First of all, instead of one recent playlist, you see a carousel of them, each featuring the covers of the albums and tracks featured on it. You can just scroll it left and right to choose the one where this track belongs. If none of them is your destination, you can scroll down to find the right playlist, or create a new one with a revamped button. Now it looks like a typical floating action button. The entire menu is full-screen now, not a pop-up window it used to be.

While this improvement seems minor, it simplifies what many music fans consider the dullest part of creating a personalized music library. Playlist management is now easier and better. Improvements like this add to the overall user experience. And maybe this will help YouTube Music increase its market share which is now only 8%, obviously less than its potential allows for. Well, if you have already released this update, don’t be surprised if it’s a little buggy: the feature is still being tested, so it’s available to random users only. Google waits for the feedback to roll it out globally.

Are you a YouTube Music subscriber? Do you create your custom playlists? If you have already received the update, how does it feel to operate with the updated UI? Is it now much easier to add tracks to playlists? Share your impression in the comments, please!