YouTube Music is taking things up a notch in honour of its 10th anniversary by introducing exciting new features for playlists, live music discovery, and fan recognition.

The streaming platform is now home to a catalogue of over 300 million tracks, including official studio recordings, remixes, live performances, and covers. Spotify reportedly hosts over 100 million, for reference. YouTube Music says its new updates are “just the beginning” of its next chapter, which welcomes a focus on “bringing fans even closer to the artists they love”.

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Further stepping it up, the platform has launched Taste Match playlists, similar to that of Spotify Blend; listeners can now generate playlists with multiple users that update daily and mix together a combination of their music tastes.

YouTube Music reports that fans have created over four billion music playlists on its platform so far, including 1.8 billion public ones. Soon, users will also be able to share comments directly under albums and playlists, and new ‘badges’ will display achievements such as ‘First to Watch’ or ‘Top Listener’, while artist milestones (the number of views on a music video, for example) will also earn them a badge.

This new era also ushers in a Bandsintown partnership for YouTube, so users can find nearby concerts while watching artist videos and Shorts, exploring Official Artist Channels, and soon, via the YouTube homepage. The partnership also unlocks a new push notification feature, alerting users to local shows.

The integration will expand to YouTube Music later this year, where live events will appear on YouTube Music home and artist pages. Bandsintown users also have access to a two-month free trial of YouTube Premium.

To mark the partnership, pop superstar Sabrina Carpenter is its featured artist; her shows will now gain significant visibility on YouTube, where she has 12 million subscribers, and on Bandsintown where she has over one million followers.

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Fabrice Sergent, Bandsintown co-founder and Managing Partner, comments: “At a time when musicians continue to struggle to generate income, this exclusive integration with YouTube further demonstrates Bandsintown’s ethos to create value and equal opportunity for artists worldwide, of all sizes and genres, to get discovered on digital platforms and sell more tickets.”

Musicians can publish live music listings via Bandsintown for Artists. Find out more about YouTube Music’s new features via the official YouTube Blog.

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