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YouTube Music gains the ability to start playback directly from album covers on the web
Hopefully the ability to cast personal playlists is up next
YouTube Music may not have had the most auspicious beginnings, but the service is quickly adding features ahead of Google Play Music's impending shutdown. Earlier this month the Explore tab started rolling out on the web, then the Android app gained a new 'Related' tab, and just last week it added the ability to swipe between songs. Now YouTube Music on the web is gaining a small speed improvement to album playback.
Now that Google has enabled multi-user support for Google Home, what can you do with your media? After a little research and a chat with Google Home support, I have the answer to that question. Keep in mind, this is the situation as of today. As we always do, we hope for these features to be fine-tuned and expanded.
You know how you can press the little music icon while you're doing a Google voice search, and it will identify a song playing in the background Shazam-style? It looks like that functionality is making its way to the Android version of Google Play Music as well. A few of our readers and one Android Police staff member have seen the "listen for music" prompt while using the built-in search function in Google's default music player. It looks like this:
In every popular album there always seem to be one or two songs that get the vast majority of attention, no matter the relative quality of the other songs. Google, for whatever reason, has decided to give this phenomenon a bit of visual representation. Head on over to the Google Play Store and click "music" (not the Google Play Music player interface), then pick any of the various albums featured on the front page. You'll see a new column in the track listing, ranking each song in popularity, presumably in relation to the others on the same page.
YouTube has become a great place for indie musicians to get their work out to the public, and in a few cases, even make a little extra money with Google's automated Content ID music identifying and licensing service. That was all well and good, right up to the point where Google decided it would make its video site into a formal music service with YouTube Music Key. We heard of serious issues with the contract terms even before the service launched, but now one independent artist has spilled the beans on those terms, and how they've left her in a conundrum.
Brazilian readers have had access to Google's music store and cloud song storage for only a couple of months, but it looks like they now have access to the subscription music service as well. Brazil has been added to the list of countries with access to, uh, All Access, and at least one Google+ user has been given the promotional message on the Google Play Music Android app. Hop to it, music fans.
Since his departure from Cyanogen, Inc., Koush has been a pretty busy guy. Yesterday, he released AllCast Receiver to the Play Store, an app that essentially turns any Android device into a casting target, a la the now-extinct CheapCast. Today, he pushed an update to AllCast that brings a couple of new features, including Google Play Music streaming and the previously-teased headphone mode. Check out the latter in action:
Since its introduction, Google Glass has been in the unfortunate position of having relatively limited functionality. However, with a steady stream of updates and eventually the emergence of the Glassware tab in the MyGlass interface, we've known the elusive wearable was due for some more exciting things. A few weeks after announcing plans to add Play Music to Glass, Google has quietly added it to the list of apps supported on the elusive wearable. Alongside this release, the Accessories store also launched the Stereo Earbuds at the hefty price of $85.
Subsonic Media Streamer Gets Three Rapid-Fire Updates With Improved Speed, Sharing Support, Notification Controls, And More
Subsonic Media Streamer Gets Three Rapid-Fire Updates With Improved Speed, Sharing Support, Notification Controls, And More
Google Music has provided for the cloud streaming needs of the average user, but what if you've got more than 20,000 tracks or you want to stream video too? Well, there's always Subsonic, which relies on streaming media from your personal storage instead of Google's cloud. The app has gotten three big updates in the last few weeks, including today's jump to 4.1.
It should come as little surprise that many of us who own multiple Android devices trust Google to tend to much of our music streaming needs. Even if you don't subscribe to All Access, Google Music offers one of the easiest ways to access your personal collection across multiple devices, including smartphones, tablets, and PCs. But what about your TV? Your Xbox 360? If you want to stream music from Google on devices that aren't officially supported, Cast To UPnP/DLNA For GMusic, from the developer of BubbleUPnP, has you covered.
So, there's this extremely minor Google Music update floating around in the "rollout" ether that will take you from 5.1.1107K to 5.1.1109K. I poked around in it and found a few boring changes related to Chromecasting, but the "new feature" that some people will really notice is the removal of the SD card hack we told you about last month.
Google jumped the gun just a little bit and shipped tomorrow's version of Google Music today, which means we've got about 12 hours to spoil even more of the surprises Google has in store for us at their "Breakfast with Sundar Pichai" event. Let's get to it.
Google Play Music Updated To v5.0.1052J With Faster Music Downloads And More Data Usage Controls [Update: APK]
After a long period of neglect, Google recently started sprucing up its music app. It's getting to be quite a respectable experience with a snazzy card-based
After a long period of neglect, Google recently started sprucing up its music app. It's getting to be quite a respectable experience with a snazzy card-based UI and Google Play All Access built-in. The new update still makes some long overdue improvements, but that's how we feel every time.
Open Source Tool Moves Spotify Playlists To Google Music Using Unofficial APIs
Google Music has probably lured a few Spotify users away with its tight Android integration and low introductory price. But what about all those meticulously
Google Music has probably lured a few Spotify users away with its tight Android integration and low introductory price. But what about all those meticulously constructed Spotify playlists? There is no official way to bring them along for the ride, but a developer has worked out a quick and dirty way to make it happen.
The Verge, WSJ: Google Strikes Music Streaming Deal With Sony and Universal, Spotify-Like Service Imminent
On the eve of I/O, Google managed to finalize deals with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment to bring a music subscription service to both
On the eve of I/O, Google managed to finalize deals with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment to bring a music subscription service to both YouTube and Google Play, according to a report by The Verge that is now being corroborated by The Wall Street Journal. If everything goes smoothly, a preview or launch of the new service tomorrow isn't out of the question. The Journal similarly says the streaming solution could launch "as soon as this week." That would give Google a substantial leg up over Apple, which is still in the process of negotiating contracts for its own music streaming solution.
From time to time, we like to dive into the murky depths of the Play Store and see what cool root-only apps we can dredge up. If you went to the trouble of rooting your phone, you'll want the best root apps to take advantage of all that freedom. That's just what we have here, the best root apps carefully chosen as must-have additions to your arsenal.
There's no denying the value in Google Music – it lets you store all of your tunes in the cloud and take them everywhere you go without using up precious free space on your device. The problem is, however, that you have to use Google's proprietary player to stream the music. If you prefer something like PowerAMP, Winamp, or one of the many other media players in the Play Store, you're simply out of luck.
Well, this is exciting. We knew it was only a matter of time before El Goog decided to get into the music streaming biz, and according to the Wall Street Journal, the company is currently in talks with several record labels to fire up a Spotify-esque service.
While Google's fledgling music service is pretty good, it's still far from perfect. Most GMusic users could probably jot down a laundry list of issues with both the app and service at a moment's notice; however, Google's slowly-but-surely doing its part to correct some of those problems. Let's take today's Play Music app update for example.