Become the DJ with YouTube Music’s new Create a Radio feature

Since its acquisition of Sonza back in 2014, Google Play Music – erm…, I mean YouTube Music, has been able to play music tailored to your mood, activity, and so on. At the time, it was a revolutionary feature that until that point was only seen in Pandora music. Now, it’s a staple of any and all audio streaming services worth their salt, but the issue is that the algorithm decides what songs or artists are up next in your listening queue.

While that will still be the case with YouTube Music’s new “Create a Radio” feature, the idea is to give you more agency over what factors play into the selection. A new feature card has appeared for many users, myself included, and tapping it launches the process of letting you choose artists to throw into the pot.

Doing so will then present you with an option to either play songs that are familiar with what you chose, or to discover new artists and music. The third and default option is to play a mix of both familiar and new titles. Additionally, there are filters that let you further manipulate the results. Ranging from “Chill”, “Popular”, “Focus” and more, you can choose only one before clicking the “Done” button and launching your very own curated radio station.

This custom radio station can then be added to your library and it becomes an endless playlist that’s constantly updated by the algorithm based on your specifications. Pretty cool, right? My only desire is to be able to name this custom radio in the future, but that just isn’t possible right now. Let me know if you’re mixing and matching, or if you’d rather just tap the basic radio feature and let it do its thing.