YouTube Goes Disco With Experimental Music Discovery Project
by Erick Schonfeld
There are so many music search engines out there based on YouTube music videos (Songza comes to mind) that it was only a matter of time until YouTube created its own music playlist maker. The YouTube Music Discovery Project just launched quietly out of TestTube (YouTube’s labs). The page is a search box on top of which says, “Find>Mix>Watch,” and once you enter a name, you hit the “Disco” button to find music.
You can enter any music group or artist, and a playlist pops up, along with a thumbnail video and a description of the band. You can find related artists, create a mixtape, and save playlists. As you are listening to music and watching videos, it is easy to add and delete songs.
YouTube is taking advantage of a lot of the officially-sanctioned Vevo music videos in the Music Discovery Project. Playlists are saved to your regular YouTube playlists page, from where you can share them via email. For instance, here is a playlist I crated called “Too Cool For School.” Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be any to purchase the music other than the occasional iTunes ad within the videos themselves. But this is an experimental product
