A Curious Case of Google Play Music

Screenshot 2015-09-06 at 11.51.39

Note: See multiple updates on this story at the end.

I use Google Play Music as my primary music service. That is, Google Play Music hosts my audio files allowing me to play them back via my phone, the Chrome browser or a Chromecast. I’ve never felt the need to subscribe to a music service because I own an awful lot of music – around 20,000 tracks you may recall. If I subscribed, I’d end up playing a lot of that music anyway. And in any case, I like to know with certainty that the music I want to listen is available to me and hasn’t been removed at the whim of an artist or because a record label’s agreement had lapsed with my service provider.

(For what it’s worth, I keep a local duplicate library in iTunes.)

A little while ago when Google launched its subscription service – charging the same £9.99 a month that Spotify and everyone else does – I got a free trial of their full service. I used it a little to experiment with – going beyond my own library and being able to play anything I wanted. In general I wasn’t that bothered with it. However the most interesting part was their integration of Songza into the app.

If you’re a full subscriber, you’ll get suggested playlists dependent of the time of day, day of week and so on. So first thing in the morning it might be upbeat music, music to exercise with or to commute to. Then during the work day it may offer you tracks to get you through that, or do to chores to. By the end of the night it could be offering songs to go to sleep to, or music to play at your house party. You get the picture.

It’s pretty intuitive, and there are usually two or three sub-menus to get to some music that suits you. It was kind of fun, but not enough on its own to make me want to pay a subscription.

Then last weekend my Google Play Music account changed. I logged in and up popped those options for radio stations. It seemed as though I was able to access the service that launched in June in the US. This is a free version of the service that offers limited skips and supposedly serves visual ads. You can’t see upcoming tracks, but it was clear that the service was making good use of my own healthy library (like Spotify, Google doesn’t have to pay rights if I already own the track).

The same service was replicated on my mobile phone. I was quite excited about it, and spent a couple of mornings listening to the service. It seemed pretty decent.

And then it was gone.

My phone was displaying a repeated “Connection error,” despite the fact that there was no loss of data connectivity.

Loading the service into my browser displayed my old familiar service. What had happened?

Searching Twitter only resulted in finding a couple of other people who’d noticed the service.

Is Google trialling the service in the UK? Is it because I initially got Google Play Music through a loophole when it was US only? Was it because I occasionally use a US VPN?

Who knows. But I wouldn’t mind getting the service back. I was quite enjoying “Ambient Scandinavian Stargazing.” (See screenshot above from a tab I left open)

[Update 7 September: And radio seems to be back again!]

Screenshot 2015-09-07 at 22.45.40

[Update 10 September: And it’s gone again. This is getting ridiculous.]

[Update 11 September: And it’s back again. I’ve literally no idea whether I should or shouldn’t have access to this service and whether Google has genuinely launched it in the UK or not.]

[Final update: It went again pretty quickly, and it’s not been back. So new proper UK launch of the service yet.]


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