YouTube announced two AI features for YouTube Music at its Made On YouTube event on 23rd September 2026: Ask Music, a conversational tool for songs and podcasts, and Your Podcast Lineup, a weekly spoken guide to new shows.
The Brief
- YouTube Music will let listeners type plain-language requests into Ask Music to build queues or ask about songs and artists.
- Ask Music draws on a catalog of over 300 million songs, including remixes, covers, live performances, and DJ sets.
- Your Podcast Lineup gives listeners a short spoken preview each week of recommended shows and why they fit.
- YouTube Music and Premium subscribers worldwide will get both features “soon,” though YouTube gave no firm date.
Ask Music turns song trivia into a queue
Ask Music lives inside the YouTube Music app and takes requests typed the way you’d ask a friend. A listener could request a mix built from the tracks that inspired a song, then ask who played bass on it. YouTube says the tool also lets users customize the queue and “dive deeper into artist lore.“
The catalog is what makes this interesting. Official studio recordings sit next to covers, live performances, and DJ sets. That gives a chat request far more to pull from than a studio-only library.
YouTube paired the launch with a discovery figure in its announcement: users found an artist new to them over 450 million times in July 2026. Ask Music is built to push that number higher by making the search step conversational.
The idea isn’t entirely new for the app. YouTube Music tested AI music hosts last year that offered stories, fan trivia, and commentary during playback; Ask Music hands that control to the listener instead of scripting it.
YouTube didn’t explain where Ask Music gets its answers on credits and recording history, or how it handles a question it can’t verify. For a tool that tells fans who played on a record, that sourcing will decide how far people trust it.
.@youtubemusic users discovered an artist new to them over 450 million times in July 2026. Today at #MadeOnYouTube, we’re making finding your next obsession even easier:
— Updates From YouTube (@UpdatesFromYT) September 23, 2026
💬 Chat with Ask Music to customize your queue and explore deep artist lore across 300M+ songs
🎧 Catch… pic.twitter.com/657qCOhx4U
Podcast Lineup narrates, then plays real episodes
Your Podcast Lineup goes after a different headache. Most people face more podcasts than they have hours to hear. Even listeners with a settled list of favorites fall behind on new episodes, let alone new shows.
The guide will appear on the podcast page of the YouTube Music app. Each week, it plays a short spoken preview of recommended shows, explains why they might appeal, and then moves straight into suggested episodes. YouTube called the experience “completely eyes-optional and hands-free.“
Spotify took a different route with its personal podcasts feature, which uses AI to generate episodes from a listener’s interests and prompts. YouTube’s version keeps AI in the narrator’s seat and points listeners to shows that already exist. Human creators stay at the end of the recommendation. It also builds on the AI podcast discovery tools YouTube has already brought to Premium.
For now, the rollout has no date attached. Subscribers who want Your Podcast Lineup should watch the podcast page in the YouTube Music app. Whether non-paying listeners get either tool is a question YouTube hasn’t answered.
