YouTube Music search on the web showing inline results, like Play Music

Abner Li | Apr 11 2020 - 1:09 pm PT

In addition to rolling out a newly-organized Library that takes inspiration from Google’s previous streaming service, YouTube Music is adopting a search feature from Play Music.

As you type, the search bar in Play Music displays songs, albums, and artists results that you can directly view or start playing, while autocomplete matches appear below. Meanwhile, lookup in YouTube Music only shows the latter type of results and opens full search.

YouTube Music is now testing an experience similar to the old Google Play approach by listing three results below the bar, with the standard suggestions below. The type of media is noted, along with album, artist, and subscriber count in some cases. However, there is no play button at the right.

A handful of users have spotted this Play Music-inspired search capability on the web, but it’s not yet widely rolled out, which is par for the server-side course. On the soon-to-be-deprecated service, this feature was present on the mobile apps and web.

This Play-inspired search helps YouTube Music users that already know what they’re looking for skip the full results page, though a visit might be needed if they want to filter by library uploads.