Google Play Music is preparing to total renewal thanks to the cloud and machine learning

With the appearance of a post on the official Google blog, which is dedicated to the new version of Play Music, we can add two more deta...

With the appearance of a post on the official Google blog, which is dedicated to the new version of Play Music, we can add two more details. The first concerns the fact that the update will be available on all platforms that currently support the service, then Android, iOS and the web, while the second concerns the timing. According to the announcement, the update will be available starting this week in 62 countries, including possibly Italy. Now we need to keep an eye on our reference app store waiting for the update notification.

If we were to sum up Google 2016 through a single concept, we could certainly do that by using the term "machine learning". Always attentive to the world of artificial intelligence, in 2016 Google has given the kick-radical integration of the results of research done in this field, within the commonly used software.

He did so by proposing At, its messaging service that integrates the powerful Assistant, and she did it with Android Nougat, who, at the moment only on Pixel, offers an even more advanced version of the same Assistant, able to interact proactively with the user. Other signs of this integration are found in Gmail, increasingly effective in filtering the emails useful, and Google Now, the Assistant Daddy increasingly smart and able to offer contextualized cards according to a set of information from the analysis the user's habits and his current position.

In short, within this ever changing landscape, it can expect that more and more Google services will move towards this direction. For this reason it is hardly surprising to find that the next major update of Google Play Music will be completely focused on the integration of machine learning and cloud services within the music app of Big G.

As you can see from the screen attached to the article, from the road test carried out by a colleague from The Verge, the new Play Music interface is completely detached from the one in the current version, to get closer to the style adopted by card in Google Now. Obviously it is not static card, but the contextual tips obtained from the integration of machine learning within the application.

Play Music in this way will be able to automatically suggest which playlists are better suited to accompany what we are doing at the time the app has: if we are in the gym, recognized by location services, there will be a proposal from a playlist workout, but if we were to find at home, perhaps on Sunday evening, there will be suggested a more relaxing playlist. The examples can go on forever according to various situations; the important aspect is that Play Music, with the ability to access the immense amount of data held by Google, will be able to predict the most probable behavior and state of mind in order to offer the right musical response at the right time.

These data come from a variety of sources, such as Maps, YouTube, the research carried out and any other Google sources can provide useful data in order to estimate a pattern of behavior. The integration of all these features is a direct effect of the acquisition of Songza, which was completed in 2014. Thanks to that, the original development team of Songza was completely absorbed in to Play Music, bringing with it all the know-how and capabilities developed. Upgrading Play Music has not yet been released and should arrive soon on Android.