Google is giving YouTube Music users the ability to create custom stations based on specific artists and to tune how the algorithm decides what songs it should play. The feature, which is called the “Radio Builder,” started rolling out on Tuesday and can be accessed by scrolling to the “Your music tuner” section of the YouTube Music homepage in the iOS or Android app.
When building your custom station, you can select up to 30 artists and choose whether you want to only hear music from them or if you want it to pull in songs from similar musicians. You can also tell it to play songs that you’re familiar with, new-to-you songs, or a mix of the two and add filters, letting you tune the mix. For example, you could make a station that plays upbeat new releases from Eden, Khalid, and Pup or one that serves up your favorite mellow deep-cuts from Boygenius and its members’ solo catalogs.
YouTube started testing this feature last year, and it’s nice to see that it’ll be sticking around. While YouTube Music already had plenty of algorithmically driven stations and mixes, having ones that you can control seems like a great option for when you want to listen to something specific but don’t feel like manually setting up a playlist.
You can use the feature, which will be available anywhere you can get YouTube Music, whether you’re a paying subscriber or a free user, according to Google spokesperson Paul Pennington.