Google has a plethora of great apps and one of the best ones is Play Music, a mix of music player and streaming service in the likes of Spotify and Deezer. As this market gets more and more competitive, Google has just released an update for the app which revamps the music controls in the notification drawer, bringing a subtle but welcome addition to the buttons.
When you are listening to music and expand the ongoing notification, now there are two new buttons – thumbs up and down, after the forward and before the backward buttons, respectively, as Google makes it easy for the user to customize its music tastes. The album art was also revamped. Previously, when the notification was expanded, you would see only a big album art and the back, pause and skip buttons. Now the album art is smaller and the music control buttons gained one extra row to make room for everything.
Curated radio stations based on user’s musical preferences are becoming increasingly popular, the addition of these new buttons is likely an attempt by Google to boost music suggestion to its listeners. The Music service has been getting some attention from the company and earlier this week a $14.99 family plan for up to 6 people has been introduced, which gives access to more than 30 million songs and unlimited radio stations on several devices, and YouTube Red, an ad-free, Netflix-style version of YouTube that Google has launched recently. The regular Play Music plan costs $9.99 per month and gives access to the aforementioned catalog, plus up to 50,000 songs that can be uploaded by the user on Google’s cloud, and these songs are combined with the catalog.
The updated Google Play Music with revamped music controls hit the Play Store with version 6.2.XXX, and you must have Android 5.1 Lollipop or higher. If your system has automatic update available, just fire up the app and enjoy the music. If not, you must open the Play Store app, head to My apps and games, and find the Play Music app waiting to be updated. If you don’t see version 6.2.XX, just be patient because updates are rolled out to users gradually.
