Google’s Play Music application has undergone its fair share of changes over the years since it was initially launched, and the most recent update which looks to have just hit in the last couple of days for most people brings in some notable new features and changes that should make the experience as a whole a lot more enjoyable. While not everyone will have likely gotten the update as of now, chances are it won’t take too long for most users to see it, and if you aren’t wanting to wait you can always download the apk file here and install the latest version now if you like.
Perhaps the most notable change out of those Google has highlighted is the gapless playback, as this is one feature users have been asking for for quite some time now. This will ensure that users can stream music and when one song ends the other will immediately begin playing without any stopping between the two tracks. This will keep the music flowing at a steady pace and overall make the listening experience a little better. Although gapless playback had been around for users prior to this update, support for Google Cast enabled devices like Chromecast and Android TV wasn’t available until now. Following this update users can now cast Play Music to either device type and enjoy gapless playback of songs.
The update also now includes support for continuous playback of songs after the caster leaves, so if you have people over and a handful of attendees are adding songs to the playlist streaming via Chromecast, there won’t be any issues if someone leaves before their additions are played. For example, if you have 45 songs added to a playlist, and all are from one caster, the playlist will finish out even if the caster leaves halfway through, whereas before it would only finish the currently playing track and then stall. It also appears that in the near future at some point, users will be able to give Play Music Unlimited subscriptions to other users as gifts, although there was little more than a few strings in the apk to denote that this feature is coming. Lastly, casters should see better stability when casting music as Google has implemented some stability improvements that should fix the issues people had with songs or playback stalling in between tracks. That should now no longer be an issue.