Although a majority of folks might still rely on traditional means such as the radio to discover new music, the competition is constantly heating up in the online music discovery realm, with services like Pandora, The Hype Machine and Last.fm always looking to recommend that next song or artist.
Today, YouTube is getting into the music recommendation and discovery game with an update to its music page.
The new music page follows redesigns to both YouTube’s shows and movies pages and looks to be part of a theme that’s been emerging lately with the Google-owned video site – recommendation. Just earlier this month, YouTube announced the launch of a personalized, TV-like viewing experience called LeanBack. LeanBack lets the user do just that and lean back as the site creates a feed of videos based on settings, preferences, subscriptions and videos shared by friends on Facebook.
This latest offering has a similar feel and, in some ways, feels like getting a bit of MTV back from the 90s, when it actually played music. Unlike sites like Pandora or HypeMachine, the big advantage here is visual – welcome back to watching a streaming feed of music videos, not just listening to songs. The new page “showcases the most viewed music videos, special promotions, curated playlists, unsigned talent and gives you the ability to create on-the-fly mixes.” It also lets you simply chose a genre and go, letting the site pick the music from there. According to the blog, we can also look forward to local music listings in the near future.
To visit YouTube’s redesigned music page, go to www.youtube.com/music.
