14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube has just rolled out a new version of its video player to a lot more users, but it looks like it’s also getting ready for a brand-new feature it’s been working on for a few months. The YouTube Music Discovery project was introduced in TestTube, YouTube’s ‘Labs,’ in January. It is now getting ready for graduation, as it is integrating it with the newly introduced playlist tool.
With the new design, introduced a month ago, most music videos get a recommended playlist with tracks that may be from the same artist or that are similar to the one you’re listening to. The playlist features an Autoplay option and Shuffle one making it great to listen to music in the background. Now, for some videos, you’ll also see a Disco button, at the top of the playlist.
The button opens up the YouTube Disco feature, or Music Discovery as it’s still officially labeled, with much of the functionality that was introduced a few months back. The interface has gotten a revamp with the newly launched YouTube design and Disco is tightly integrated with the video-player page. You don’t need to navigate away to use the feature and the video keeps on playing, the player is resized on-the-fly, even if you open up the music-discovery tool.
The YouTube Disco page features a biography of the artist you are listening to, a list of similar artists and two separate video playlists. The first one is the YouTube Mix, the actual music-discovery part similar to services like the Last.fm artist radio or Pandora. You can add individual tracks to your queue or all of them at once. The Disco page also lists all videos from that artist which are available on YouTube.
When you’re done setting up your playlist, you can just close Disco and the video player reverts to its original size without affecting the playback. It’s a great way of discovering new music on YouTube, as, even though you might not realize it at first, it has one of the biggest selections of tracks anywhere online. The Disco button is not enabled for all music videos yet, but the Disco feature can be accessed directly from TestTube.
