Google has just announced the biggest overhaul of its Play Music streaming service in years. On the face of it, Play Music has moved beyond the card-centric design of old, and now shows an interface built around album art, bright colors and vector graphics. Instead of shaded squares, graphics now expand to fill the entire window.
Aside from the exterior design overhaul, the company also makes use of machine learning to understand what kind of music the users will like. Google brings you hand-picks playlists to personalize music for the user on the basis of factors such as location, activity and weather.
The company says a new home screen will act as a ‘Personal DJ’ that based on data from sensors in the users’ phone, will be able to learn what kind of music the user specifically likes. The new version also maintains an offline playlist that users have the access to. Users can access the latest update from the Google Play Store.
Updates at a glance:
Smarter recommendations: The heart of this update is an improved recommendation engine. Machine learning is used with your listening history to determine the types of music you want to hear, then additional factors like location, local weather, time of day, and possible activities are incorporated to generate personalized suggestions.
Home screen changes: While the recommendation engine is the key element in this update, it’s the visual changes that will stand out to most users.
Offline music cache: Google’s final change comes in the form of an improved offline music manager. The new offline storage mechanism seems to be the most logical. It promises to store music based on your recently played music.
The roll-out starts today and will be hitting Android, iOS, and the web throughout the week.
