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Google Play Music's New Release Radio Works for Everyone

Jul 13, 2017 09:41 PM

Google Play's newest feature may have once been exclusive, but it's now available for everyone.

New Release Radio — a feature that provides you with a personalized playlist of new songs compiled based on your listening history — was originally released a month ago for Samsung devices. Now, it's available for all smartphone users with the Google Play Music app.

New Release Radio works by assembling a playlist of new music that it believes you'll like based on what you've listened to previously. It functions similarly to Spotify's Discover Weekly playlists, except it updates your custom playlist more frequently with changes made each day. All songs and albums on the playlist are current, having been released in the past two weeks. Considering Google focuses majorly on machine learning and has impressive data-collection capabilities, it's surprising it's taken this long for this feature to be added to Google Play Music. However, it's finally here, and now literally anyone can test out the feature for themselves.

I was curious to see how the feature would function on my iPhone since — not only is it not a Samsung — it's not even an Android. I listened to a few random songs and playlists on the app to develop a listening history, and then I searched 'New Release Radio.' I clicked on the first search result that popped up, and I was immediately directed to this new feature.

I was worried I would need to use the app for a full day before a custom playlist could form, but it looks like the feature creates a playlist for you from the minute you start using it. It's extremely straightforward to use and works — even on my iPhone — without issue.

So, the rumors are true. It seems that this former exclusive actually does work on all phones equipped with the Google Play Music, even my archaic iPhone 5c. Although Google has yet to confirm whether this feature is intended for such wide use, no one's complaining that we all have access to it for now.