Following a revamp of Newsstand last week, Play Music is the next app to see a total redesign starting this week. From website to mobile, the service is now “smarter, easier to use, and much more assistive” thanks to the same machine learning smarts leveraged by other Google products.
Specifically, Google Play Music uses machine learning to figure out what songs you like and then factors in signals — location, activity, and weather — with hand-picked playlists to deliver personalized recommendations wherever you are and whenever you want.
With a big focus on context, opting in to the new features will deliver “personalized music based on where you are and why you are listening.” The latter includes everything from “relaxing at home, powering through at work, commuting, flying, exploring new cities, heading out on the town, and everything in between.”
The redesigned Android and iOS apps feature a new homescreen where you can find these recommendations. However, that appears to be the extent of the visual changes for mobile. On iOS — where the update is already live — ‘My Library’ looks the same. The Android app does see a more prominent search bar on the main screen for faster voice search.
Paying subscribers will get extra features like an updating offline playlist based on what you’ve listened to recently. As with all machine learning-based recommendations, the accuracy will improve the more you use Play Music.
On the web, there is a more significant visual refresh with a switch to a white app bar. ‘Recently Activity’ is smaller with shrunken down album covers with the right side adding a bar showing the different playlists to pick from. Scrolling down to categories like “Late Sunday night” and “Playing Video Games” does change the background color to match.
The new experience will be rolling out to Android, iOS, and the web this week to all 62 countries where Play Music is available.
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