It's Update Wednesday, so get ready for a new round of Google app updates today. To start off, we have a new version of Google Play Music - 5.4.

What’s New

My Devices interface

Most importantly, today's update finally adds the ability to manage and deauthorize devices without having to go to the web interface - a feature we've longed for ever since discovering the 10-device limitation. While 10 devices may seem like a lot, once you factor in a few rounds of phone upgrades, various tablets lying around the house, and Google TV, you may just find yourself running into the limit soon. I know I already have numerous times in the past.

Offline Radio

A pretty big addition to Play Music 5.4 is the ability to pre-cache entire radio stations for offline playback. A new option called Keep on device, previously not available for radio stations, is now available from the contextual menu.

Note: The I'm feeling lucky radio station is a notable exception.

Refresh Music option

Another new option to trigger a refresh of your music from the cloud has been added to the settings.

Duplicate Chromecasts bug is fixed

Remember the annoying issue with duplicate Chromecasts showing up in the Cast menu? Well, it's been brutally murdered. Yay!

Left: Play Music 5.3. Right: Play Music 5.4

Play Next

A Play Next button has been added to songs and albums so that you can more conveniently play stuff you want without clearing the playlist or dragging stuff around. Just hit Play Next, and your playlist will be updated immediately.

New location for the Cast button

The Cast button has been relocated to be much closer to where your fingers usually hang out, i.e. bottom of the UI. It's now reachable even on large devices.

Left: Play Music 5.3. Right: Play Music 5.4

More options in the sidebar

The sidebar now has a more convenient access to the app's Settings, Help, and Send Feedback. Previously, you needed to use the Menu or overflow buttons (depending on your device) to access Settings, for instance.

Floating Playing From bar

The Playing From bar in the playlist now floats. It existed previously but scrolled away as you went down the list. This bar tells you what radio or album the current song is playing from, which I find quite handy. It also lets you reshuffle upcoming songs when playing a radio station.

Shuffle option added to Listen Now

In addition to Play Next, Shuffle has been added to albums and radio stations in Listen Now (thanks, miri!).

Left: Play Music 5.3. Right: Play Music 5.4

Crash fix?

The last several versions of Play Music were force closing nonstop for me. So far, version 5.4 hasn't crashed, which seems to indicate the bug was fixed. Sweet!

Bug in Play Music 5.3 that seems to be fixed in 5.4

 

Have you found anything I missed? Drop a line in the comments and let me know.

Download

The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.

File name: com.google.android.music-5.4.1409N.1014766.apk.

Version: 5.4.1409N.1014766 (Android 2.3+).

MD5: fa24be6435c74be8e966893d5bf1287c.

  1. AndroidFileHost mirror
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  4. MEGA mirror
  5. Yunio mirror 

Thanks, @Kourou59!