Every December, the internet and social media are flooded with colorful graphics as music fans share their year-end listening info. However, this year, YouTube Music is bringing something new to the party. They’ve opted to take it beyond simple data for the 2025 YouTube recap. In an attempt to outshine competitors like Spotify Wrapped, the streaming giant is integrating its cutting-edge AI technology directly into the 2025 recap experience. However, there is one important catch: the approach that allows for hyper-personalized, generative playlists is available only to YouTube Premium subscribers.
‘Ask Music:’ How YouTube’s AI Tool Changes the Recap Game
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For any YouTube Music subscribers with a Premium membership, there’s a decent chance you’ve at least dabbled in the Ask Music tool. However, if you haven’t, it’s worth giving it a run, especially when searching through your 2025 YouTube recap. In short, you can prompt the AI tool to do virtually anything you want, and it’ll make it happen.
While the “Ask Music” tool was slowly rolled out across various devices for streaming, it eventually reached iPhones and iPads earlier in 2025. One review offered high praise to YouTube’s AI feature, which was detailed on Android Authority.
“Ask Music allows you to type in the kind of music you’re looking for, and within a second, YouTube Music uses AI to create a custom station based on that prompt. If you need some inspiration, you can also choose one of the suggested options, such as ‘Chill beach tunes’ or ‘Music to pump me up,'” the site wrote.
They proceeded to lay out a specific request commonly made to Ask Music, stating that with just one sentence, it provided “exactly the type of music I was looking for.”
“I love starting my day with calming coffee shop-style music; it helps me focus on my writing, and it pairs nicely with my morning cup of joe,” the review read. “I told Ask Music to create a station with ‘Calming coffee shop style music, with a focus on acoustic and folk style tunes.’ In about two seconds, I had a station featuring Bon Iver, Agnes Obel, Damien Rice, Tracy Chapman, and The Lumineers — exactly the type of music I was looking for.”
For example, here are a few prompts you could hypothetically give the AI tool on YouTube Music:
- Most played songs of the year: “Create a station with my 15 most-played songs of 2025.”
- Summertime hits: “Play all of the 2000s songs I listened to in June, July and August.”
- Road trip music: “Create a station with the songs played the week of March 2-9.”
- Favorites in one genre: “Create a station with the alternative songs I listened to most in 2025.”
This is an extremely beneficial addition to YouTube’s 2025 recap for users who go through various phases of specific music types. It’s also great if there were a particular month or two when you thoroughly enjoyed the music selection.
Premium vs. Free: Gaining Access to the AI Feature for Your 2025 YouTube Recap
Unfortunately, the only way to benefit from the AI tool and take advantage of Ask Music is if you hold a YouTube Premium subscription. And for good measure, if the prompts above aren’t enough to pique your interest, you can take things one step further and get Ask Music to provide information about your own listening trends.
While 12 months is a long time, with a lot of different types of music interests for many listeners, there are other unique options if you choose to dig a bit deeper. You can prompt the AI tool to tell you how your listening changed over the span of 2025, or to rank your favorite genres and much more.
Related: Why Record Labels Are Suddenly Pushing Spotify and Apple Music to Copy Netflix
