Google Play Music looks set to gain two new features in the near future. The first is likely to be a new autoplay feature, while the second will be an improved ability to adjust the sound quality settings. At the moment there are no details on when the new features will go live but their existence has been picked up in an APK teardown of the most recent version (7.1) of the Play Music Android app.
In terms of the first new feature, this is a rather self-explanatory one. Once the feature is live, users will have the ability to commence music playback as soon as the app is launched. Which presumably will be beneficial to those who typically listen to Play Music while in a hands-free mode. At the gym or driving being two prime examples. The second feature is one which is designed to offer users of the app an improved ability to control the sound quality and by association, control other elements like the fluidity of streaming, battery life and storage. To sum up this feature, the code reveals that Google plans to allow users the ability to choose the quality of music when streaming over Wi-Fi or when listening to content in offline mode. At present, the ability to choose the quality is only available when on cellular data – as a means to control how much data the app is eating while playing. While that won’t necessarily be a benefit to those on Wi-Fi and certainly not when in offline mode, the addition of these two extra mode controls will allow the user to control other aspects which will be of relevant. For instance, how much space is being used on a device when content is stored offline.
As mentioned, neither of these new features are currently live at the user level and instead, the details of the features are simply being noted in the latest version of the Play Music app’s code and is relevant to an app update that was posted to the Google Play Store yesterday. As such, the update should arrive on devices soon enough. However, if you would like to install the latest version of the app as soon as possible, you can by pulling the APK through the link below and sideloading it to your device.
Download Google Play Music v7.1 APK