For many users, the reasons for choosing YouTube Music over streaming giant Spotify vary, but ease of use is definitely not on the list. The service has been online for 10 years, but it has always lacked one of the most basic and most commonly complained features: allowing users to sort playlists by artist, album or song title. Now, this gap for many years seems to be finally being filled.
YouTube Music finally lets users sort playlists themselves
The news first came from Reddit, where a user r/YouTubeMusic communityPosted a screenshot stating that YouTube Music is adding more classification methods to the existing sorting options. In the past, playlists could only be sorted by “Most Votes”, “Latest Added”, “Oldest Added” or “Manually Sorted”; now, a new sorting method has appeared in the interface, allowing users to organize their music library in a more intuitive way.
The discovery sparked an immediate response from the community, with many users in disbelief at the belated update. One user even left an excited message: “Oh my gosh, it’s finally here! I never thought they would actually do this feature! Please hurry up with the desktop version, I mainly listen to it on my computer.” This reaction may seem exaggerated at first, but for those who have been using YouTube Music for a long time, this is indeed an update that has been waited for too long.
Interestingly, this feature is already a basic feature on other streaming platforms. Competitors such as Spotify and Apple Music have offered complete sorting methods from the beginning, so it is a bit surprising to see YouTube Music gain such a high level of attention because of “basic functionality”. However, this also highlights the special positioning of YouTube Music: although it is not as mature as Spotify in terms of interface and functions, it has obvious advantages in price and music exploration capabilities. Taking the U.S. market as an example, YouTube Music Premium is about a dollar cheaper per month than Spotify Premium, and relying on YouTube’s vast library, it has always been seen as a more advantageous platform for discovering new music.
As for when this sorting function will be fully launched, there is still no clear timetable. According to reports on Reddit, the first users who discovered the new features were using version 9.20.52 of YouTube Music, but some people said that they also used this version but did not see the same options. This means that Google still adopts its usual “server-side gradual push” strategy. Even if the app is updated, new features may not be available immediately.
If you are a YouTube Music user and want to confirm whether you have received this update, you may want to check the sort menu of your playlist first. However, this assumes that you have not encountered another bug that has troubled many people recently: the problem of stopping playing a song after playing it. If your app is not affected by this bug, you should have more trouble testing the new sorting method and reorganizing your playlists. Although this update may seem minor, for users who have relied on playlists for a long time, it means that YouTube Music is gradually filling in the functional gaps for many years. If Google can continue to improve the user experience, this may become the key to attracting more people to switch to YouTube Music.
Source: KOCPC Chinese