Google acknowledged a number of issues related to the Google Home’s support for Google Play Music that the Mountain View, California-based tech giant introduced earlier this month. The problems range from some purchases not registering on the Internet of Things (IoT) device to a number of portfolios from particular artists being entirely unsupported by the feature. The smart speaker also seems to be struggling with searching users’ content libraries, as some reports are claiming that a broad range of songs cannot be accessed through the device no matter what, yet those same tracks can be cast to the Google Home from an Android smartphone.
According to another report, the issue that prevents songs from certain artists from being played can be circumvented if the songs themselves are part of one’s personal library. An unrelated bug flagged by several users has the Internet-enabled speaker starting a suggestions-based playlist without being asked to do so immediately after playing certain tracks. Initial reports indicate that the only functionality related to the speaker’s Google Play Music support that works in a reliable manner is the one that’s meant to identify and reproduce playlists. A Google official recently acknowledged the complaints and said that the firm’s software engineers are working on addressing them as quickly as possible but didn’t provide a more specific time frame for their resolution. Due to the sheer volume of reported issues, it’s likely that the bugs won’t be eliminated with a single update and will instead be slowly fixed through a larger number of patches that will be gradually distributed in the coming weeks.
As always, users affected by the issues are encouraged to send feedback to Google and detail their troubles as much as possible. It’s currently unclear whether the Internet giant will provide frequent updates on the matter or if it will simply start rolling out fixes without any special announcements, as the company has a history of varying between the two approaches to software support. As for Google Play Music itself, the service is set to be merged with YouTube Red in the near future, the tech giant recently said.