Recent trends in social media have resulted in apps copying different features from their competitors. YouTube made an unsurprising attempt to recreate the viral success of TikTok with the launch of Shorts in 2021, adding to the slew of TikTok clones that had cropped up in the United States over the past few years. Last March, Spotify redesigned its app with a TikTok-inspired feed for discovering new songs and artists. The vertical video feed format could soon spread to YouTube Music, if a recently discovered experiment is any indication.
A Reddit user has shared a screenshot of a new YouTube Music interface with a "Samples" tab that displays a vertically scrolling feed of music videos (via 9to5Google). The new section sits between the Home and Explore tabs and uses an entirely new icon with two overlapping play buttons instead of the YouTube Shorts logo.
The Samples tab presumably throws you into a bottomless pit of videos just like Shorts, though it's unclear if this is a rehashed version of YouTube's TikTok clone or another destination in YouTube Music that presents music videos in a vertical format. It features a few different buttons not found in Shorts, including one for adding a video to your playlist. Below that is a dedicated Shorts button, which when tapped should take you to the YouTube app's short-form video feed.
The new tab appears to be part of limited A/B testing in Brazil at the moment. The Reddit poster notes that they're running version 6.02.53 of YouTube Music, though it's not available on the same version of the app installed on some of our devices.
There are several compelling reasons why TikTok's format is being adopted by some of the leading music streaming platforms. First, it provides a great way for users to discover new music. By adding Shorts to YouTube Music, users would be able to find new music that they might not have otherwise heard. Another is convenience. Currently, users have to switch between two different apps to watch Shorts and listen to music. Adding Shorts to YouTube Music would make it more convenient for them to access both features in one place.
Given the weight of the Internet's largest video sharing platform behind Shorts, it should come as no surprise that the TikTok-style format will eventually make its way to YouTube Music. While not everyone enjoys watching Shorts, it has surpassed 1.5 billion monthly views as of last year, proving that YouTube's TikTok clone is catching on.