Google Play Music Update: What’s New?

As if filtering emails, recommending search queries, providing alerts for upcoming travel and updates from sports, and other such things was not enough, Google is now bringing its machine learning to another aspect of your life — the music you listen to.

In a blog update Monday, the internet behemoth said: “Building on our commitment to help you find the right music for any moment, today we’re introducing the new Google Play Music — a fresh take on our music streaming service that is smarter, easier to use, and much more assistive. To deliver that, Google Play Music uses machine learning to figure out what music you like and then mixes in signals like location, activity, and the weather along with hand-picked playlists to personalize music for wherever you are and whenever you want tunes.”

The new experience will be rolled out via an update to the Play Music app, which will start being available in 62 countries across Android, iOS and web platforms this week. Users will have to opt in to the new service which will personalize music based on your location and what you are up to. For example, workout music will start up when you enter the gym, a track serenading the sunset will play when the sun goes down and if you hit the library, soothing music will help you focus, the blog explains.

The radio service will use a mix of machine learning and human curators, and the company says “your experience will keep evolving (and improving) as we get to know you better.”

Another new feature, only for paid subscribers of the service, will be the availability of offline music. If, for whatever reason, you lose connectivity, you will still be able to hear songs you listened to recently, even if they were not downloaded and saved offline.

While Play Music will find information about you from other connected Google services, to get the most out of this service, you will need to use Google Play Music habitually, giving the algorithm enough information and time for it to serve you music based on your lifestyle.