YouTube Music is rolling out personalized playlists

YouTube Music wants what Spotify has already had for years. Beginning today, YouTube’s music-streaming service is rolling out personalized playlists based on users’ listening activity.

Three playlists to start — Upon launch, the personalized playlists come in three flavors: “Discover Mix,” “New Release Mix,” and “Your Mix.” The first two mixes focus on introducing users to music they haven’t heard, while the latter is comprised mostly of songs users have already streamed.

Give me Spotify, but call it YouTube — It’s pretty obvious that YouTube’s new mixes are built on the same premise as Spotify’s “Made For You” section.

Spotify’s personalized playlists fall into the same three categories as YouTube’s: “Daily Mixes” made mostly of music users have already listened to, a “Discover Weekly” playlist with unheard music, and a “Release Radar” playlist with new releases.

Spotify is still very much ahead of the curve — It’s been more than three years since Spotify introduced its personalized playlists. Spotify offers up to six Daily Mixes for each user, and they’re updated daily; YouTube Music’s counterpart, Your Mix, will be updated “regularly,” though it’s not clear how often that means. And right now there’s only one Your Mix playlist for each user.

YouTube Music promises there’s still more personalization to come, which is good: the company will need to come up with some fresh ideas if it hopes to really compete with Spotify, rather than merely catching up.