Google Play Music has made some excellent changes over the years, and there is a lot to get from the app if you know where to reach it. However, everything can not always be good and there are some things missing in the app that have become an eyesore for quite some time.
UI Overhaul
It was four years ago that the Google Play Music went from a Holo blue/black but rather soothing taste to a more irritating orange/white, and the skin has gone no major overhaul since then even though the a lot of features have been added leading to the app getting hard to handle. The home page which shows the recommended artists, albums and more has got the last update. The recommendations on have gotten better over time, but they might get a little too pesky especially with suggestions to return to the last playlist you were listening to, or the last artist and so on. The recents are sent to a button below the search bar in the main menu and that may be irritating to users.
Google Play Music UI
The main menu has got bloated over the years – Podcasts have been added, and Explore was broken up into Top charts and New Releases, Recents were added and Now Listening was rechristened Recommendations. The drawback is that if you want to access a playlist that is not in your recents(a core function of the app), you have to tap at least thrice which is bad for a music playing app.
The playback UI and playlist UI are also bad as they just spread the album art all over the player which makes it look very bad. The correct size should have been maintained, and there should have been bigger controls to thumb through tracks.
Device Policy Revisit
The device policy hurts a lot of people, especially who change phones a lot for a variety of reasons. For one, If you are registered on both on the Music manager account and web extension then you personal computer can be counted two times. Plus, every time you power-wash your Chromebook, it is counted as a different account, which can eat into your allowed devices for no reason. There is also the unreasonable rule that even devices that you can not use to download or upload to your Google Play Library account can still count in the the ten devices limit like Android Wear 2.0 and Android TV.
Google Play Music App
Uploads/Downloads Without A Desktop Computer
One of the worst problems is that uploads and downloads can only be made from a PC, and you don’t have the option of adding them from directly to your cloud library on your phone so you can add them to your playlists, rate them and cast them, as you can not cast locally stores songs on Play Music. Once you device storage is getting full and you are not able to get space for more data, all the device that you use should be able to download your library and let you give back what is yours in the app.
Gapless Playback
There is a second when Google Play switches between songs, and that is really annoying if you are enjoying the music and are really into it. There are a lot many albums on Google Play that are gapless, and it is the media player that always creates the trouble for those smoothly produced albums that artists and record companies work very hard at making smooth and gapless. There are indie music apps on Samsung Galaxy S8 that can give you a gapless experience and if the Google Play Music can’t then you know there is a problem.
