One of the things music lovers wait for during the tail end of the year is a playlist from their favorite music streaming playlist showing their “year in review” or the songs they were listening to the whole year. Spotify and Apple Music bring this to their subscribers but YouTube Music did not have one ever since they relaunched two years ago. Well that seems about to change this 2020 as they’re preparing a “My 2020 Year in Review” playlist which some users are already receiving early on.
Unlike the year-end review from both Spotify and Apple Music, YouTube Music’s is pretty stark and basic. According to 9 to 5 Google, what you’ll receive is basically just a playlist with cover art with the words “My 2020 Year in Review” and text underneath showing some of the artists included in your playlist. There doesn’t seem to be other playlists or albums or artists involved. Well, that’s still better than nothing of course.
There are also no shareable infographics or data about your listening habits on the platform for this year, which is something that Spotify particularly has excelled in. YouTube Music does have a general Top Songs of 2020 collection in various genres. But these lists are universal and not personalized or localized so it should be available for everyone and shareable as well. But your own personalized year in review playlist doesn’t seem to be shareable.
While Google worked on making YouTube Music a good enough replacement for Google Play Music, it’s still a bit late to the music streaming party and has to play catch up with its competitors. Having this year in review is a step in the right direction but hopefully by next year, they’ll be able to make this better to achieve feature parity with the other more popular services.
While some users are receiving this already, it doesn’t look like to be in a wide release yet. But if they want to be ahead or keep up with the others, they should be releasing it sometime this month or at the very lest, early December.