Category: Google Play Music

The Google Play Music app for Android has an update rolling out that brings new features to everyone.  The bulk of the version 7.9 build is aimed at the future, namely Android O so a lot of the attention and focus of this release is to be found once O rolls out to everyone.  That includes things like Notification Channels, a new feature that will be coming in Android v8.

For today however, there is a new Search History feature that you can access on devices today that will give you access to your music search history.  This history includes any music, album or artist searches you have done either from the Play Music app or site.

Google Play Music has released their first podcast produced by Google, City Soundtracks.  The 15-odd minute casts are aimed at highlighting an artist and the city from which they originate.  While Play Music has had the ability to listen to podcasts for a while now, this is the company’s first foray into actually producing one.  And I have to say, it’s pretty good.  Right now the cast list is only three episodes, all released yesterday, featuring artists from Austin, New Orleans and Oakland.  You can check it out here.

The official description pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

City Soundtracks by Google Play Music is a traveling conversation about the people, places and moments that shape our musical lives. Each episode features an artist and a city. Host Hrishikesh Hirway invites musicians to lead listeners on a tour of the city through conversation and music.

I’ve listened to two of the three episodes and I have to say, it’s not bad.

A friendly reminder to all of those who have been debating picking up a Google Home.  The promotion that gives you six months of free streaming audio on Google Play Music ends on February 27th.  That means if you want this promotion, you need to get your order in prior to that date.

Google Home launched with a lot of promotions including Google Play Music and YouTube Red.  These services are tied together so if you have a subscription for Play Music unlimited, you also have YouTube Red.  This is true for this promotion as well.  If you are already a subscriber to Google Play Music, sorry, you can’t take advantage of this promotion.

Google has announced that a major overhaul of their music streaming service, Google Play Music, is rolling out this week.  The update will bring a significant change to the user interface of the app but there are also a lot of changes happening behind the scenes to make a better overall experience.  What the company is doing is building in Google’s machine learning into the app.  The idea is for it to learn the music you like as well as when you listen to certain types of music so it can make better and more accurate suggestions.

Google Play Music uses machine learning to figure out what music you like and then mixes in signals like location, activity, and the weather along with hand-picked playlists to personalize music for wherever you are and whenever you want tunes. Starting this week on Android, iOS and the web, the new experience will roll out globally (62 countries, to be precise).

This should sound pretty familiar.  Google has been in the process of injecting their machine learning into all of their apps and services over the course of the past year with the aim to have their apps and devices understand you better.  While we tend to think of machine learning in big contextual things (like Google Home for example), having it in straight forward apps like Google Play Music will bring a much richer experience to users too.

Google has been busy this week supporting their customers in India and this morning, it just got a little better.  Now if you are in India you can use the Google Play Music service to upload your music and purchase music through the service.  It comes after months of rumors of the service coming to the country but nothing ever materialized until today.  The music catalog available appears to be equal to that of the one in the United States plus there is a significant number of Bollywood songs & albums in the catalog.

As for pricing, individual songs equate to about .23 Cents while complete albums will start at $1.05 and go up from there.

Last week a small update hit the Google Play Music app but on the surface there wasn’t much new.  However, within the settings of Google Music you will now see the option for a Sleep Timer.  Essentially it acts like a countdown timer and when it expires, it pauses your music.  The idea, as the name suggest, is to play some music to help you go to sleep then shut down so you aren’t playing music all night or running down your battery if your phone isn’t charging.  This new feature is in version 6.13.3321 for those keeping score at home and you likely got the update last week if you have the app installed.