Samplette
Samplette is a music discovery engine that plays random YouTube music videos, narrowed by nine stackable filters covering genre, style, region, key and tempo. Metadata comes from Discogs and AcousticBrainz. Free with ads, Pro is paid monthly.
What is Samplette?
Samplette is a music discovery engine built on top of YouTube's catalogue. It draws music videos at random and plays them in an embedded YouTube player, behind an ambition printed on the home page: Escape the algorithm. Nothing is hosted locally, and the terms are blunt about it: We do not host, store, or control the videos displayed through the Service, which come from third-party platforms such as YouTube. What separates Samplette from a shuffle button is the metadata layer. Each track arrives with a panel showing artist, release, year, channel, views, key, tempo, genre, style, region, label, copyright and phonographic copyright. Those values come from two openly licensed sources credited by the publisher: the Discogs Data Dump (CC0 1.0) for discography and images, and AcousticBrainz (CC0 1.0), the audio analysis project run by the Music Technology Group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra with the MetaBrainz Foundation, for tempo, key and scale. Randomness is then steerable. Nine stackable filters constrain the draw: genre, style, region, key, tempo, views, year, tags and a Topic channels only switch, with Match all and Exclude modifiers on genre, style and tags. Alongside Random, the interface offers Recent history, For you, Trending and Favorites. Player settings auto-advance after a set number of seconds, start the next track at a random point, hide tracks already seen, and switch between light, dark and system themes. A comments section with user ranks, seven reporting reasons and a hide option adds a light social layer. An account is optional, since random playback works without one; it unlocks favourites and saved filters, while Pro adds playlists, notes, recent history, media controls and removal of Samplette's own advertising. The artificial intelligence here is not generative. It sits in recommendation, through the For you mode and the analysis of playlists, favourites and listening activity, and in moderation, through the detoxify toxicity model listed among the open-source components published on the legal page. Scope is deliberately narrow: web only, no mobile app, no public API, 18 and over, operated by Samplette LLC under Florida law.
What it does
- Play a randomly drawn YouTube music video instantly, with no account and no payment
- Steer the draw with nine filters: genre, style, region, key, tempo, views, year and tags, plus Match all and Exclude modifiers
- Restrict results to YouTube Topic channels only
- Read a per-track metadata panel: artist, release, year, channel, views, key, tempo, genre, style, region, label and copyright
- Jump sideways with More from this release, artist, channel or label, and More like this (Pro)
- Save up to 10,000 favourites and 200 saved filters, both included on the free plan
- Build playlists, add notes, browse a 1,000-track history and export a playlist to YouTube (Pro)
When to use Samplette / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Samplette is the right fit.
When to use Samplette
- Crate diggers and record collectors hunting obscure recordings that algorithmic feeds never surface
- Producers and beatmakers looking for source material by musical key, tempo and era
- Music and dance teachers who need classroom examples filtered by genre, style, region or tempo
- Music therapists, choreographers and fitness trainers building sets around a target tempo and key
- Archivists, researchers and curious listeners reading per-track label, year and copyright data, for personal non-commercial listening
When not to use Samplette
- Businesses and creators after commercial use: the licence covers personal, non-commercial purposes only
- Anyone wanting to download or sample tracks, since stream ripping and audio or video recording are expressly forbidden
- Developers needing programmatic access: there is no public API, and scraping, bots and webdrivers are banned
- Mobile-first users expecting a native iOS or Android app, as Samplette is web-only with no extension either
- Under-18s, and anyone looking for a tool that generates or edits music rather than surfacing existing recordings
How to use Samplette
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Open samplette.io: random playback starts without any sign-up
- Accept, reject or customise analytics cookies in the consent banner
- Open the Filters panel and set genre, style, region, key, tempo, views, year and tags, and switch on Topic channels only if you want official artist uploads
- Refine genre, style and tags with the Match all and Exclude modifiers
- Apply the filter, or reset it, and save it for reuse (up to 200 saved filters, free plan included)
- Hit shuffle and let the player run, using the timer setting to auto-advance to the next track after a set number of seconds
- Open Metadata on any track to read artist, release, year, label, copyright, phonographic copyright, key and tempo
- Follow the contextual links, More from this release, artist, channel or label, or More like this, which are Pro features
- Create an account (username, email, password, acceptance of the terms and privacy policy) to keep favourites, history and filters
- On Pro, add tracks to a playlist, attach notes, export the playlist to YouTube, and manage billing under Settings then Subscriptions
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Usable immediately, with no account and no card details
- Filtering granularity rare in a discovery tool: key and tempo from AcousticBrainz, region and label from Discogs
- Rights metadata displayed on every track, including label, copyright and phonographic copyright
- Substantial free plan, with 10,000 favourites and 200 saved filters included
- One readable Pro price at 9.99 USD per month, with a 7-day free trial, a 14-day refund window and no forced annual commitment
- Complete, dated legal documentation (terms, privacy and cookie policies of 16 June 2026, pricing of 8 April 2026) and a detailed GDPR framework
- Technical transparency: the full list of open-source components and their licences is published, and usage limits are given as figures rather than left vague
Cons
- Free plan funded by display advertising, with ad-block detection and a blocking modal, while YouTube's own ads remain even on Pro
- No native mobile app, no browser extension and no public API
- Publisher identity stops at Samplette LLC: no postal address, no about page, no social links and no public company founding date
- Licence limited to personal, non-commercial use, with stream ripping, scraping and automation prohibited
- Perpetual, irrevocable licence granted to the publisher over user content, and analysis results that may be retained indefinitely
- No data processing agreement, no Article 27 EU representative and no named data protection officer
- Catalogue is not guaranteed, since availability depends on YouTube, regional restrictions and third-party APIs, playlist export is capped at 50 videos in temporary unnamed playlists, and explicit content may appear on this 18-and-over service
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan is available, funded by display advertising and including up to 10,000 favourites and 200 saved filters. The paid tier, Pro, has a base price of 9.99 USD per month, billed monthly and renewing automatically until cancelled; prices may vary by location, currency, purchasing power, exchange rates or tax rules, with the final amount shown at checkout. A 7-day free trial is offered before the first charge, and a refund may be requested within 14 days of the initial payment or of a renewal, by writing to support@samplette.io. Paddle acts as merchant of record and handles billing, local taxes and currency conversion, so a bank statement may show Paddle rather than Samplette. Cancellation is handled under Settings then Subscriptions, and access continues until the end of the billing period. Substantial changes to prices or features are announced at least 30 days in advance and take effect from the following cycle.
- random playback
- basic filters
- favourites up to 10
- 000
- saved filters up to 200
- with Samplette display advertising
- manage playlists
- advanced filters
- recent history
- media controls
- save notes and access without Samplette advertising (YouTube's own ads are not included)
- 200 playlists
- 1
- 000 tracks per playlist and 1
- 000 tracks of recent history
- 7-day free trial before the first charge
- then automatic monthly renewal until cancellation
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Samplette handles your data.
GDPR overview
The GDPR framework is set out in detail rather than merely claimed. The privacy policy lists the legal bases relied on under the GDPR and UK GDPR: consent, contractual necessity, legitimate interests and legal obligation, with consent withdrawable at any time without retroactive effect. A consent banner governs non-essential cookies in the EU and EEA, withdrawal running through the in-app privacy settings, while strictly necessary cookies rest on legitimate interests. Data is transferred to and processed in the United States under the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, backed by encryption and access controls. Access, rectification, erasure, portability, objection and restriction are exercised by email to privacy@samplette.io, with a right to complain to a local authority. Breaches are notified without undue delay. Gaps remain: no Article 27 EU representative, no data protection officer and no DPA.
Who owns the data?
The terms are explicit on ownership: You retain ownership of your content. What changes hands is a licence. By submitting user content, meaning comments, playlists, notes, saved filters and their associated metadata, you grant Samplette LLC a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive licence to use, reproduce, modify, display, distribute and create derivative works from it, for the purposes of operating, promoting, improving and analysing usage of the Service, including improving content recommendations and platform features. You must warrant that you hold the rights to whatever you upload, and Samplette may remove or restrict content that breaches the terms. The Service and its own content remain the property of Samplette LLC or its licensors. Downgrading to the free plan deletes nothing without your action.
Reuse rights
Samplette collects account data (name, email, account details, profile preferences, messages), technical data (IP address processed transiently for routing, security and abuse prevention, device and browser identifiers, pages viewed, operating system, actions, timestamps, referring URLs, cookies and local storage) and user content: comments, playlists, notes and saved filters. It uses them to run the service, to personalise it by analysing saved playlists, favourites and listening activity in order to improve content recommendations and platform features, to communicate, to secure the platform and to meet legal obligations, plus aggregated and anonymised analytics. Named recipients are Google Analytics (loaded only once analytics cookies are accepted), Cloudflare and beehiiv as processors, Paddle and Discogs as independent controllers, and Playwire for advertising. The policy states that no personal information is sold for monetary consideration, while acknowledging that some advertising disclosures amount to sharing under California law. On the user side, reuse is tightly bounded: the licence is personal and non-commercial, and downloading, stream ripping and metadata scraping are prohibited, so nothing can be reused commercially without asking. No document mentions training AI models on customer data, in either direction.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The site names a jurisdiction but never a host. The privacy policy states that information may be transferred to and processed in the United States and other countries where its servers, affiliates or service providers are located. Transfers out of the EEA and the UK rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, backed by encryption and access controls. Cloudflare, Inc. acts as content delivery network and security provider, a processor under the GDPR, keeping technical metadata for short periods. Stated security measures include encryption in transit, access controls, firewalls, periodic security reviews and limited employee access. Beyond that, nothing is specified: no hosting provider, data centre country or region is named for the application servers themselves. The domain resolves to 104.21.76.119, an anycast address inside Cloudflare's network, which locates nothing. The published open-source component list does include Microsoft Azure SDKs, but no document confirms an Azure deployment, so it remains an unverified hint rather than a fact.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Samplette.
- The free plan runs on display advertising and detects ad blockers: a modal blocks use until the site is allowlisted or Pro is bought, and YouTube's own ads remain even on Pro
- User content carries a worldwide, perpetual and irrevocable licence to Samplette LLC, including the right to create derivative works
- Analysis results, and where applicable the associated user identifiers, may be retained indefinitely, which is an open-ended exception to the general retention rule
- Explicit or age-sensitive material may appear: the publisher does not guarantee that filtering systems catch it, and the service is restricted to users aged 18 or over
- Use is strictly personal and non-commercial, with scraping, automation, circumvention VPNs and reverse engineering forbidden, enforced by a three-tier policy where three breaches bring a 7-day suspension, then zero tolerance, then a permanent ban
- Disputes go to binding arbitration in Florida with a jury and class-action waiver, opposite a publisher whose identity stops at a company name, with no postal address, no data processing agreement, no Article 27 EU representative and no named data protection officer
- Endless shuffle with automatic advance makes passive listening easy to prolong, and account choices are not all reversible: a username can be changed only once, and deactivating an account costs access to favourites, saved filters and trends
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low. There is nothing to install: Samplette runs in a browser, and random playback works before you create an account. Signing up asks only for a username, an email address, a password and acceptance of the terms and privacy policy, confirmed by a verification link. No API key, no integration and no configuration are involved, and exporting a playlist to YouTube is a single user action. The only friction is on the free plan, where advertising has to be allowlisted in an ad blocker, or Pro bought instead. No mobile app to install; the interface is responsive.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Samplette
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an account to use Samplette?
Where does the music come from?
Where do the key, tempo, genre and label values come from?
How much does Pro cost, and is there a free trial?
Is the free plan time-limited?
Can I download the tracks I discover?
Is there a mobile app or a public API?
What happens to my data if I leave, and what is the minimum age?
Should you pick Samplette?
Samplette is a niche tool and makes no secret of it. It does not try to replace a streaming service; it tries to make serendipity steerable. Its value lies in a combination few consumer products expose: genuine randomness on one side, and filters on key, tempo, region, year and label on the other, fed by two CC0 datasets, Discogs and AcousticBrainz, and played back through YouTube. That architecture explains both the low price and the fragility. Samplette owns none of the music, none of the metadata and none of the playback: it assembles free third-party resources into an interface. If YouTube availability shifts or a data source moves, the product moves with it. At 9.99 USD a month, with a 7-day trial, a 14-day refund window and a free plan that already includes 10,000 favourites and 200 saved filters, the ask is modest and the commitment short. Expectations should be calibrated. The intelligence here is recommendation, through the For you mode, and moderation, through the detoxify model, not generation: Samplette finds music, it does not make it. Use is licensed for personal, non-commercial purposes only, and downloading, sampling and scraping are expressly forbidden, which rules out most professional workflows unless rights are cleared elsewhere. The transparency profile is unusual. Documentation is exemplary for a product of this size: dated terms, privacy and cookie policies, a detailed GDPR framework, numbered usage limits and a full open-source licence page. Corporate transparency is the opposite: no postal address, no about page, no social presence, no public founding date, no data processing agreement and no Article 27 representative. For a 9.99 USD subscription that asymmetry is tolerable; for anything more committed, it deserves weighing.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.