My 24x7 music library - Google Play Music

I still remember the era of early 90’s, I was 8 years old lad, dad bought for me a funky looking Aiwa Walkman. That was probably the first pocket music player in my residential complex. I used to feel so much pride carrying my personal gadget.

This walkman made me a passionate music lover. I started collecting many Bollywood films audio cassettes. I was so crazy that I used to listen to music more than 4-5 hours daily.  During late 90’s people started talking about discman, a portable cd player, that time I was not lucky to have one for me however I got hands on with discman at my friends’ home. These early personal music players couldn’t hold with rapid tech evolutions as I-pods, a tiny digital music players replaced them quickly. Cassettes and mp3 CDs became obsolete as flash media became cheap & music lovers started storing their collections on pen drives.  In present era of good bandwidth & low data rates people started switching to online music streaming options.

In India today we have many online music providers like Hungama, Saavan, Dhingana & most popular Apple music. Search giant Google came late in the party with their offering Google Play Music just few months ago, initially offering 45 days subscription for Rs. 89 & now Rs. 99 per month.

Google Play Music Subscription

During this Diwali season, I decided to opt for Google Play Music service & subscribed the same using my credit card.  Android phones have preinstalled Google Play Music, in fact I was using this app to play my local media from couple of years however with the addition of online streaming service by Google it made it very smart. Anyone can open this app & using subscribe option can purchase the service, they even have free subscription for 15 days, I utilized the same initially before opting for paid version.

Ease to Use and Navigate

User Interface of Google play music app is very clean & user friendly, kudos to Google’s designer/developer team. Most importantly the app is fully accessible with built-in screen reader Talkback. You can filter music based on language, Jonner, mood, artists, filmi/private albums, etc.  As per Google, you can listen to more than 40 million songs using their service. They have good collections of regional songs like Marathi, Tamil, Telgu, Urdu, Gujrati, Bengali, Punjabi, Malayalam. On the home screen of the app there are various options like “Top Charts”, “New Releases”, “Music Library”, “Recently Played”; these options are straight forward. This streaming service works really well on mobile data, I tried using Jio & Vodafone it worked really well without any buffering. On wi-fi connectivity it automatically switches to the high quality & optimizes the same on mobile networks. You can configure all these streaming quality options through settings menu. You can even configure your preferred languages from same tab. If your are listening to a song & want that song to be in your library then simply open options for the same & use “Add to library” menu. Surprised? What is point of adding song to library if it streams online? Yes, there is an advantage here as songs added to library are available even your device is offline. In other words, music library which you have created is available offline, don’t you think it’s great? This library of course exist till you’re a subscribed member, once you surrender your subscription it automatically wipes out from your device.

Music for Where You Are

One of the cool feature of this service is its availability on computer browser through a dedicated website play.google.com/music. Amazing thing is your music library is synced through all your devices automatically, means songs added to phone will be available on website. This website also highly accessible with windows based screen readers like NVDA & JAWS. Google recommends to access this site using its own browser Chrome as it has got some added features like unlimited download & music controller extension.

Smart & Intuitive

Google uses its own advance machine learning techniques to improve user’s music listening experiences; it suggests songs/playlists based on your location, mood, day/time & other factors. This improves over the period depends on your usage. I saw this is well working for me as it automatically shown some relaxing playlists when I was at home & some jazzy numbers during my travel. It has got many preloaded playlists based on mood, artists, language & Jonner. Using search option, you can find your desired song/album/artist, if this search did not give any result then it automatically suggests matching video on YouTube, you can even play the video in same interface. I found this feature really wonderful.

Final Thoughts

In this era of high speed mobile broadband these online streaming services are really going to take up huge chunk of digital music market, Music industry is welcoming this move as this will generate revenues which are severely affected by piracy. As a subscriber I got music liberty to stream/download any song of my choice & it also gives the freedom to access my music library on multiple devices. No matter where I am, car, office or home my music is always with me. Saavan & other players definitely have large music options but in terms of usability/accessibility Google Play music is far better. I suggest Google to integrate internet radio in this which will make this a complete music streaming service. If you’re a music lover and want to have your music always with you in an average budget then Google Play Music is your choice.

So, friends, get subscribed.  Grad their present offering of 90 days free trial meanwhile let me shuffle some latest Hindi and Marathi movie songs on my Google Play Music.

Happy listening!