Conventional Radio And Other Music Streaming Platforms
Music was first transmitted and heard over radio in December 1906. For the longest period of time, the producer of the radio station or the broadcaster had full control of what their listeners were hearing. Even today, the majority of music streaming platforms don’t have a lot of flexibility when it comes to their radio features, including famous platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music. Google explored this gap together with YouTube to create an innovative approach to their radio feature where users have a lot more control over their listening experience and musicians could get more views. Here’s how it all goes down!
Exploring YouTube’s Create A Radio Feature And What It’s About
Available on both IOS and Android operating systems, this feature is founded on the basis of developing a personalized radio station for every user. To provide a unique listening experience, It employs a combination of human curation and advanced built-in algorithms. In other words, this approach ensures that recommendations are finely tuned towards a user’s musical preferences.
The platform is constantly striving to improve its recommendations by providing users a range of customization options. Among others, users can start by first selecting 30 favorite artists and decide how frequently they want these artists to appear in their playlist. They can also add or remove songs, apply filters to define their playlist and more. All of these customization features would in turn, allow the platform to develop a deeper understanding of the user’s musical taste and deliver better recommendations over time. To top it off, it is available to both free and Premium YouTube Music users, making it a widely accessible and commonly used service on the platform.
Previously, YouTube Music already had a solid radio feature where user’s would immediately have a generated playlist of songs recommended to them after selecting any song on its platform. These recommendations would appear in an ‘up next’ section signifying that it is on autoplay and that the next songs to be played would follow the list accordingly. Users would also have the option to save that generated radio playlist as their regular playlist, allowing them to revisit and enjoy those curated songs at any time. As an artist you could benefit from this and find a way to employ a YouTube promotion service to have your music on peoples radios.
How Can I Use YouTube Music’s Create A Radio Feature?
In case you had trouble setting up your radio station on YouTube, here are 4 quick steps summarizing the whole process of getting it up and running well.
Step 1: Access ‘Create a Radio’
To access the ‘Create a radio’ feature, simply scroll down the YouTube Music app, until you locate and click the option. It should be labeled as ‘Your Music Tuner’. You could also do this by searching for “create a radio” to directly access it.
Step 2: Inspire Your Channel
After following through, you will be guided to the next window containing an endless list of artists. This is where you should be able to select up to 30 artists to curate your radio channel.
Step 3: Customization
This is the part that would shape your listening experience. A window will appear and you will have to decode between Familiar, Blend, or Discover. This step tunes the recommendations by following the level of emphasis on your selected artist as well as controlling the frequency of them appearing in your playlist.
Step 4: Filter It How You Want!
You can then choose from a variety of category options including Popular, Focus, Upbeat, Pump-up and more. These categories essentially allow you to select the type of music that suits your mood and preferences.
