In a move designed specifically to combat services like Spotify, Rdio, and other music streaming services, Google is tweaking YouTube’s search feature to promote playlists and other forms of continuously streaming music. If you now search for a recognized artist, the right hand side of the page will show a list of the artists’ most popular tracks, but on top is a thumbnail that will cue a custom playlist where you can listen to the most popular songs back to back. Google’s utilizing all of its videos, even videos uploaded by fans, to create the most robust playlist possible. One of the more popular features – YouTube’s discovery tab – will still be available, but will also start playlists upon clicking through. This new feature seems like more of a stopgap while Google develops its own streaming-focused music service, but it’s an effective use of resources already available to them; one can imagine many different ways for brands to get involved, such as sponsored playlists. Whether Google waits until it develops its own service to get brands involved, however, remains to be seen.
