Google Play Music

Google’s Play Music All Access subscription streaming service is today arriving for Canadian users almost a year after first launching in the U.S. and Europe. A report from the CBC notes that Google is expected to make an official announcement today ahead of the Canadian Music Week event kicking off May 6.

Google is already listing Canada as supported for All Access on its website and Canadians should now be able to access the subscription service online and through the Android app. 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Google’s Play Music service previously required installing the Music Manager app to upload music to the cloud service on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Today that changes as Google adds the ability to drag-and-drop your music collection to upload it directly through the browser within the Google Play Music web interface. It’s still in “lab” beta mode, but you can easily enable it:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Earlier this week, Google made a backend tweak to the Google Search app for Android that added the ability to take a picture or video with Google Now by saying “Ok Google, take a photo.” This afternoon, the company has added another new voice command, this time relating to Google Music. Starting today, you can now say “Ok Google, play some music” and an “I’m feeling lucky” radio station will start to play via Google Music. The I’m feeling lucky station provides a constant stream of music based on your listening history.

Google today updated the Play Music app for Android with a handful of new features. The biggest change is the ability to cache radio stations for offline listening, following the update in December that added the ability to save songs to your SD card. This means that you can now create a radio station and be able to listen to it whenever you want, even if you don’t have an active internet connection. It’s unclear how much of a radio station Google will cache, but we’d imagine it’s quite a few songs, so you can listen for a while before hearing a repeat song (via Android Police).

Also new with this update is the ability to manage your authorized Google Play Music devices from directly within the app. There’s a cap of 10 devices, and as many power users now, it doesn’t take long to reach that limit, especially if you share an account with family members.

There are a few other minor tweaks throughout the app with this update, such as a new “Play Next” button on songs, artists, and albums. There’s no official changelog just yet, as this appears to be a staged rollout. Be sure to keep an eye on the Play Store for the update to hit your device.

Expand
Expanding
Close

The Chromecast, Google’s streaming HDMI dongle came out last summer. It is compatible with any Android device running 2.3 or later, iOS devices with iOS 6 or 7, and any Mac or PC. Initially, users were able to stream Netflix or Youtube from an iOS device and Android device, Google Play on Android, or stream websites to a TV using the Chrome browser on a computer. The Chromecast works differently from Apple’s AirPlay system in that you can multitask and do other tasks on the device or you can let it go to sleep while streaming.

Very quickly after its release, Chromecast has received support for Hulu +, Pandora, and HBO GO. Last month a major update added ten new apps including Plex, Vevo, Songza, Red Bull TV, Post TV from the Washington Post, Viki, RealPlayer Cloud, Avia, Revision3 Internet Television, and BeyondPod. The most recent update the Chromecast received allowed users to stream Google Play movies and music directly from the Chrome browser on a computer.

In this How-to, we’ll discuss how to setup the Chromecast, use it with a Mac and Android device, and explore its gaming potentials.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Google has been known to do some interesting things with the data it collects from users, and here is yet another example of that. The company has found a way to visualize the data collected from Play Music users and display it on a Google Music Timeline. This timeline offers a visual representation on the growth and decline of certain genres of music (via Google Operating System Blog).

The graph displays a colored stripe for each genre of music. The thickness of each stripe represents the popularity of that genre in a given year. The data is collected from the music uploaded to Play Music by users. For instance, the Jazz stripe is thickest in the 1950s because many users have Jazz content released in that time period in their library.

The Music Timeline shows genres of music waxing and waning, based on how many Google Play Music users have an artist or album in their music library, and other data (such as album release dates). Each stripe on the graph represents a genre; the thickness of the stripe tells you roughly the popularity of music released in a given year in that genre. (For example, the “jazz” stripe is thick in the 1950s since many users’ libraries contain jazz albums released in the ’50s.) Click on the stripes to zoom into more specialized genres.

As the hours tick away to the end of 2013, Google Play Music is still offering a few freebies to help ring in the new year. Under the “Best Tracks of 2013,” Google is giving away some of the following songs:

Expand
Expanding
Close

According to source code discovered by the unofficial Google System Blog, Google Play Music users will soon get the ability to upload music directly to the service from directly within their browser. As of right now, in order to upload files to the service, you have to download Google’s Music Manager app and select which files you would like to upload.

The source code discovered reads  “Drag songs or folders here to add music to your library. Or, if you prefer, select from your computer.” Google already allows users to drag and drop files to nearly all of its other online services, so it makes sense that Play Music would be next in line to receive the feature.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Google has now added the Play Music app to the MyGlass page, allowing Glass users to use voice controls to play music through the device. The announcement was made by Google engineer Stephen Lau on Google+.

The Play Music APK was first spotted in the Glass XE11 update last month, and users were able to side load the app, but it was not officially listed by Google at the time. Now it is. As we explained then:

Once the app is loaded, simply say “OK Glass, listen to,” then the name of a song, artist, album, or playlist. A card will then pop up with results and allow you to specify what to play. A new card also stays pinned for further music control, including Play, Stop, Skip, Rewind, and volume control … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Last week, Google began rolling out the XE11 update to Glass Explorers, touting a host of new features, such as new voice commands, directions home, and much more. Oddly unannounced, however, was support for Google Play Music. As first discovered by Phandroid, Glass users who wish to enjoy their music with the device can side load the Play Music APK and control it via voice controls. Once the app is loaded, simply say “OK Glass, listen to,” then the name of a song, artist, album, or playlist. A card will then pop up with results and allow you to specify what to play. A new card also stays pinned for further music control, including Play, Stop, Skip, Rewind, and volume control.

The music plays through the device’s bone conduction speaker, which means quality might not be the best, but that should improve with the upcoming hardware revision of Glass with a built-in earpiece.

Instructions to side load the APK are relatively simple, though do involve some basic ADB usage:

1. Download the latest Google Play Music APK here.
2. Go to Glass Settings > Device Info and turn on debug mode. Connect Glass to your computer.
3. Using the Android SDK, issue the command “adb install FILENAME.APK“, where “FILENAME” is the APK’s actual filename on your computer.
4. Enjoy the tunes!

If this odd post from a Google employee is to believed, the company has been working on this feature for the past several months and plans to officially announce it soon.

Since first announcing its Google Play Music ‘All Access’ streaming service earlier this year on Android, Google has been delaying the release of an official Google Play Music app for iOS for unknown reasons. Android chief Sundar Pichai originally said the app would be out in “the next few weeks” in May, but four months later we’ve yet to get an iOS app or access to the $9.99 month streaming service on iOS. Today, Engadget reports that Google is continuing to test the app internally and will launch it later this month:

Sources aware of Google’s plans have let slip to Engadget that not only is the company currently testing a native Google Music iOS app internally, but that it’ll launch later this month. We’re told that while employees have been invited to test the app, Google still needs to fix a few bugs before it’s ready for release… The company had previously closed the door on iOS users because Flash was needed to enforce DRM restrictions set by music labels. Now, Google appears to have overcome that issue and is nearly ready to launch.

Until the official app from Google launches, popular third-party clients like the gMusic app have been updated to support the “All Access” streaming service.
Expand
Expanding
Close

An update is rolling out to the Google Play Music app that bumps it to version 5.2.1204L. Notably, the update adds the ability to create new radio stations based on music genres. Previously, the radio functionality was only available for use by songs, artists, or your past listening history. It’s important to note, however, that an All Access subscription is required for unlimited radio use. Both iTunes Radio and Pandora have had the genre-based station feature for sometime now, so this is a much welcomed feature for Google Music.

Also new in the update is an improved download queue. Now, you have the ability to pause, resume, and cancel songs that are being downloaded at any given time.

• All Access Genre Radio is here! Go to Radio or Explore, pick your favorite genre and enjoy unlimited radio based on the music you love.
• New download queue that allows pausing, resuming and canceling

The update is available now on the Play Store. 
Expand
Expanding
Close

From 9to5Toys.com:

The Google Play music store has kicked off ‘A Rock and a Hard Place’ promotion which offers rock and metal albums for as low as $3.99. There are a total of 90 discounted albums from the biggest classic rock and current metal groups: Guns N’ Roses, Aerosmith, Five Finger Death Punch, Black Sabbath, System of a Down, and more. No word from Google on how long the promo will last so if you see an album you like be sure to grab it soon.

Google Play’s Music All Access service – Google’s rather clumsily-named equivalent to Spotify – has now been rolled out to Europe, initially to nine countries.

The service, launched in the USA in May and later extended to Australia and New Zealand, is now available in Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Google is offering a handful of MP3 tracks for free via the Play Store to celebrate the Sub Pop Silver Jubilee festival in Seattle. The sale offers free songs such as “About a Girl” by Nirvana, “The Funeral” by Band of Horses, “New Slang” by The Shins, and much more.

Google announced today on Google+ that a new partnership with Starbucks will provide free WiFi and the ability for customers at Starbucks locations to stream unlimited songs, radio and more from Google’s recently launched AllAccess music service. Apple has of course offered similar promotions and continues to offer free iTunes content and more through Starbucks locations. Back in 2007 it announced a partnership with Starbucks in the US to offer a free iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, and it continues to offer its free app and song of the week picks through physical cards in store and through mobile apps.

Google’s new streaming music service is still limited to the US, so we’re assuming the new promotion is also limited to Starbucks locations within the country. Last we heard an iOS app for the service would be arriving sometime this month.  
Expand
Expanding
Close