Google+ Hangouts Add YouTube Playlists For Intimate Music Parties

Google+ continues its slow transformation into what is hoped to be a social media powerhouse with the addition of YouTube playlist parties to Google+ Hangouts. One of the potentially more powerful of Google+'s products for music marketing, Google+ Hangouts allows for small group interaction with large scale broadcast capabilities via Hangouts On Air. Now Google+ Hangouts includes the ability to create YouTube video playlists during a Hangout offering another marketing tool.

Google+ Hangouts, a free video chat service for small groups of up to 9 people, is one of the stronger results of the Google+ experiment. It's geniunely useful for connecting small groups via video and it offers some interesting music marketing possibilities.

For example, intimate listening parties were an early direction for musicians wanting to share their music.

Google+ then introduced Hangouts On Air that allowed one to broadcast Hangout sessions and archive them on YouTube. Will.i.am was an early adopter and the feature was eventually rolled out to the general public.

Google+ Hangouts just added video playlists using a YouTube app in Hangouts:

"Everyone can add videos in the Hangout through a search tool in the app, or remove the videos you don’t like. All your friends in the Hangout can drag and drop videos to sort the order in the playlist, or skip forward or backward to play the next one. Click the “Push to talk” button to chat with the group…"

"If you like a video that’s playing, you can share the video with your Google+ circles at any time…you can also save the playlist that you and your friends created to your YouTube account as public or private to enjoy later."

The Next Web's Drew Olanoff reports that currently you can't share the playlists via Hangouts On Air. But that seems like just a matter of time before that feature is added there as well.

Based on the Google+ graphic for Hangouts On Air and for the announcement of the playlist feature, they clearly value the association with musicians who don't want to limit their reach to small groups.

More: Daria Musk recently appeared in a Verizon Wireless Google+ Hangout.

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith blogs about business at Flux Research: Business Changes and about dance at All World Dance: News. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.