Google Play Music gains Songza integration featuring activity-based stations

Google Play Music has just been updated with its first integration with Songza, the curation-focused music streaming service acquired by Google early last July.

As a result, Google Play Music subscribers in the U.S. and Canada can now enjoy mood- or activity-based station recommendations not unlike those found in Songza. As explained by Google in its announcement post:

If you’re a Google Play Music subscriber, next time you open the app you’ll be prompted to play music for a time of day, mood or activity. Choose an activity to get options for several music stations to make whatever you’re doing even better—whether it’s a station for a morning workout, songs to relieve stress during traffic, or the right mix for cooking with friends. Each station has been handcrafted—song by song—by our team of music experts (dozens of DJs, musicians, music critics and ethnomusicologists) to give you the exact right song for the moment.

As in Songza, you can also search for a particular station to listen to or for a specific mood or activity you want to find music for in Google Play Music.

Google Play Music also lets you download the mood- or activity-based stations for offline listening, see what song is set to play next, start a new station based on a song, and even add, remove or reorder the tracks in the stations — capabilities which aren’t supported in Songza.

In addition to Songza integration, the latest update to Google Play Music also enhances the Listen Now page to show recently played music and improved recommendations, including new releases and interesting radio stations.

Google Play Music

Moreover, the new version of Google Play Music leverages Google’s so-called “material design” with enhanced images, colors, and transitions. It also includes fixes for the shuffle function and an improvement that shows what the queue is playing from (as in Spotify).

Optimized for iPhone and iPod touch running iOS 7.0 or later, Google Play Music is available on the App Store for free.

Aside from Google Play Music, Google has also just issued updates to its Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides office productivity apps and Hangouts messaging app.

Docs, Sheets, and Slides have all been updated with a new Incoming section for shared documents along with the usual bug fixes and performance improvements. In particular, Docs has been updated with improved support for hardware keyboards, improved copying and pasting between the app and Slides, and support for applying heading styles in documents.

For its part, Hangouts has been updated with support for the larger screens of the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus.