Google Play Music

For the past several months, a revamp to Google’s streaming music offerings has been widely rumored. A new report today pegs the launch of the revamped YouTube Music for next week, while YouTube Red and other video features will be replaced by a new “Premium” service.

Update: Google has officially announced the new YouTube Music and Premium.

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Update: A source tells us that Google is currently planning to stick with the “YouTube Music” brand for the forthcoming music service. Remix, as has been previously reported, is only the internal codename.

A tipster told us recently that Google has lately been “preparing to shut down Google Play Music,” something that I hinted at early today in a tweet listing the service among a couple of other current Google products that I think are about to get cut. While we couldn’t corroborate the tip, it appears Droid-Life has — Play Music subscription streaming is likely shutting down soon.

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We’ve known for quite some time that YouTube has been planning a new premium music subscription service, but the details have been a bit unclear at times. Now, at SXSW, YouTube’s Global Head of Music, Lyor Cohen, has given a bit of extra insight.

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Earlier this month, more details emerged about the long rumored subscription service from Google that would merge Play Music and YouTube. Negotiations with music labels were cited as an obstacle at the time, but today, YouTube has struck the necessary deals.

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For the past year, Google has been rumored to be working on a new music streaming service. In February, the Play Music and YouTube teams were combined, with the merger of the two products actually confirmed in July. A new report today shares more details, including a possible launch date.

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Early last year, Play Music added a directory and podcast playback to the Android and web apps. Later on, Google’s music service was updated with machine learning to deliver personalized and contextual recommendations for songs and playlists. A recent startup acquisition now suggests that podcast personalization could be coming.

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While we wait for YouTube Music and Google Play Music to merge into a singular, more cohesive service, Google is updating the former to now allow users to save individual songs, playlists, and albums for offline use. This is a pretty basic feature that should have been included a while ago, but we’re glad to see it finally make an appearance.

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Google Home has received fairly regular updates since its launch last fall, with one of its latest additions allowing users to play songs that they had either purchased from (or uploaded to) Google Play Music. This allowed Home owners to still listen to tracks on Play Music even if they didn’t have a subscription to the streaming side of the service. Unfortunately for some people, this update has been pretty bumpy since its launch.

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Back in February, Google combined their YouTube and Play Music teams in order to “deliver the best possible product.” That move widely suggested that Google was working on a single music service to greatly simplify their offering. Today, that merger was officially confirmed by YouTube’s head of music.

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Google Play Music is rolling out a small tweak to its web app that makes navigation slightly easier and noticeably faster. Instead of requiring a tap of the hamburger button to reveal a navigation drawer, there is now a persistent side navigation rail.

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After launching on the web app several months ago, Play Music for Android is finally testing an identical interface that directly lists songs, albums, and artists in search results. Furthermore, songs can be conveniently played from the inline interface.

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When the Galaxy S8 and S8+ were unveiled, Samsung and Google announced a partnership that would give new owners of the handsets several exclusive Play Music features. One of which was a new radio station called New Release that was updated daily with new songs, curated by your music tastes. Starting this week, anyone can listen to New Release Radio without having Galaxy S8…

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At I/O 2017, a spate of new features and media integrations were announced for Google Home. The latest allows the smart Google Assistant speaker to stream uploaded and purchased songs from Play Music.

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