YouTube Music adding album Pre-saves with countdowns

At Made on YouTube 2025, the Google video site announced a slew of new AI features that Creators will soon be able to use. Here’s what’s new for YouTube Music and Podcasts. 

YouTube Music 

On the music front, YouTube wants to let “artists and their top fans [connect] on a more personal level.” 

YouTube Music will let users “Pre-save” (with a bookmark icon) upcoming albums or singles. Like on other streaming services, you can see the album page ahead of time, with released tracks already appearing inline. Meanwhile, you also get a live countdown to the release date, with this also appearing on the artist detail page and album shelf. There will also be “release notifications” that are hopefully more consistent than the current alerts. YouTube Music Pre-saves will be available in the “coming weeks.”

Meanwhile, artists can soon send behind-the-scenes, thank you, and other “just-for-fans” videos (like Shorts) to “their most dedicated fans.” This is coming early next year. 

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Finally, YouTube Music is piloting exclusive merch drops (in the US) to give top viewers early access. This started testing earlier in 2025.

Podcasts

As of July 2025, YouTube says users “consume” over 100 million hours of podcasts on a daily basis, with 30+% of that starting as a livestream of premier. 

Traditionally, podcasts are audio-only, but their popularity on YouTube has resulted in many adding a video component. YouTube will now use AI to generate a video component for audio-first podcasts. It involves you setting a “visual style,” like documentary, film noir, anime, 3d animation, bokeh, or sketch. YouTube will generate graphics that match what you’re talking about.

This is launching to select podcasters “early next year” with a larger expansion for later in 2026.

Meanwhile, a more straightforward capability will let Creators automatically turn video podcasts into clips, with AI providing suggestions. The interface conveniently includes the transcript. This will be available in the coming months, with suggestions for YouTube Shorts suggestions coming early next year.