YouTube announced an expansion of Ask Music and a new podcast guide, Your Podcast Lineup, at Made On YouTube on 23 September, TechCrunch reported. The company plans to let listeners ask questions about music in everyday language and hear a weekly spoken preview of podcasts it recommends to them.
Key points
- Ask Music is being expanded from personalised stations to questions about songs, musicians and related listening.
- Ask Music works across a catalogue of more than 300 million songs.
- Your Podcast Lineup is designed to give a spoken preview of recommended shows each week.
- The updates are planned for Music and Premium subscribers worldwide.
Ask Music follows a question beyond one song
Ask Music already has a place in the app: it has mainly been used to make personalised stations and find music to fit a mood, Mashable reported. The announced expansion would allow a request to begin with something the listener knows — a song, for instance — and follow a connection they want to explore. That could be an album that influenced the recording, a musician who played on it or a podcast featuring its artist.
The distinction is easiest to see in a question about a bass player. Searching for a song title can find that recording; asking who played bass on it can open a route to other recordings featuring the same musician. At the Made On YouTube demonstration, Derrick Gee used Ask Music to follow that route, Mashable reported. Ask Music can also find songs that sampled a particular track.
Choosing music to listen to could therefore start with a question about a familiar song rather than the name of the next one. A request about its influences could become a mix, while a question about a musician could lead to more of their recordings. Those are paths the announced feature is intended to support, rather than listening results established by the demonstration.
Ask Music covers more than 300 million songs in YouTube Music’s catalogue, spanning DJ sets and covers as well as remixes, live performances and official recordings, TechCrunch reported. That range matters to the proposed interaction: a question about a song’s history might lead away from its official recording, while a request for a mix needs recordings to put in a queue. The catalogue figure describes the material available to the service, not a measure of how well Ask Music answers questions about it.
The Gemini spark opens Ask Music’s chat
On mobile, YouTube Music plans to put a Gemini spark icon in the top-right corner as an entry to Ask Music, 9to5Google reported. Tapping it brings up a chat sheet with a prompt box at the bottom and an option to speak rather than type. Suggested starting points include making a mix, discovering artists and finding podcasts. The placement gives the conversational interface a fixed point in the app instead of relying only on a card in the home feed.
Ask Music is also due to appear where a listener is editing a playlist or creating a mix, 9to5Google reported. The expanded features would also let listeners customise their queues and explore artists’ backgrounds. A request could thus concern what plays next as well as what a song is about; the intended result is a listening choice, rather than an answer left in the chat.
YouTube Music experimented in 2025 with AI-powered music hosts that supplied stories, fan trivia and commentary connected to what was playing, TechCrunch reported. Ask Music takes a different form: the listener supplies the question, which may concern a recording already on their mind, and can ask for a mix or related material. Both approaches put spoken or written context around music, but the new controls are built around a request from the listener.
Your Podcast Lineup speaks its recommendations
Your Podcast Lineup is planned for the podcast page of YouTube Music. Each week, it is meant to play a short spoken introduction to recommended shows, give reasons they might appeal to the listener and then move into suggested episodes. Instead of requiring a choice from titles alone, the guide would present a recommendation in audio before the episode begins.
Finding a podcast for the next listen could begin with that spoken preview and continue directly into an episode. A recommendation could be heard before the guide moves straight into a suggested episode. The weekly guide is separate from Ask Music’s question-and-answer interface, though both are intended to help listeners choose among music and podcasts in the same app.
YouTube plans to bring both updates to YouTube Music and YouTube Premium subscribers worldwide. For Your Podcast Lineup, the next stated step is narrower than a general release: YouTube will begin testing the feature with subscribers worldwide later in 2026, 9to5Google reported.
