YouTube Music is Google's much-maligned music service that follows in the footsteps of Google Play Music. Part of what makes it a frustrating service to some people is that it's meant to be a Google Play Music replacement now, but it still lacks many features. Fortunately, the service continues to pick up necessary features. The latest additions are collaborative playlists and "assisted" playlists.

Collaborative playlists is a feature that many other music services have, and they can be very useful for social listening. Users can create a playlist in YouTube Music and then share a link to allow others to add songs. The YouTube video platform has had this feature for a while, so it makes sense on the music service as well.

The next playlist feature is a little fancier. The "assisted" playlist feature uses machine learning to provide users with song recommendations in playlists. The recommendations are based on the current songs in the playlist and your listening tendencies. You can even create a blank playlist and fill it with recommendations based solely on the playlist name. Spotify has a similar feature where it will show related songs at the bottom of a playlist.

These new playlist features are rolling out now to YouTube Music on Android via a server-side switch. While they may seem like small updates, as with every YouTube Music addition, they go toward making the service feel like a real competitor in the music industry.