Tag: Music

Google Home for Android has been updated with a new Listen tab that makes it easier to find curated music streams across a wide range of services.  The app itself was updated last week but the new Listen tab has now been enabled on the back end.  If you don’t see it yet, don’t fret.  It will be there over the course of the next few days.  Once you have it, you will be able to see music streams from the likes of Spotify and Google Play Music that you can listen to at any time.  You will also get recommendation for apps that can be used by Google Home for music streaming.

The new Listen tab also gives you recommendations of artists and music streams based on your listening habits.  This is a great way to discover new music but also rediscover an old favorite from the past.

Listen Tab in Google Home

Google’s drive is to make it easier to find streaming music.  With so many options, having the ability to scan a single tab in the Home app makes things easier and faster for you.  If you have accounts with Spotify and Google Play Music, you will be able to open those apps from within the Home app to get to the music stream easily but you can also play them from within the Home app too.

While Android devices have quick and easy access to Google search, having alternatives on your phone is never a bad thing.  The Bing search app from Microsoft has been available for Android for a while now and it, like many of the Microsoft apps for Android, continues to grow and mature nicely.  The latest update to the search app brings a music discovery feature that allows you to find the song you hear in your local coffee shop or other location.  Like other apps, you simply turn on the app, hit the Music button and have Bing listen to the song.  Within a few seconds it will return the result, giving you the song title and artist.  You can then tap on that information at the bottom of the screen and get more details about the song, artist and albums that are available from that artist.  On most songs you will also get the lyrics for the song.

Twitter and Spotify have teamed up to give you a pretty cool way to share music from the streaming service to your timeline.  Starting today, you can link to a Spotify track on your timeline and it will generate an audio card where your followers can listen to the track for 30 seconds.

You’ll want the volume up for this #SummertimeSoundtrack. Tweets with @Spotify tracks now play in your timeline! 🎧https://t.co/93avzwiQbs

— Twitter (@twitter) May 26, 2016

The idea, of course, is to attract your followers who aren’t using Spotify to join the service but it is also a great way to sample a song to decide if you want to purchase it.