If you’ve one of the many Aussies who don’t enjoy Google’s (or any larger multinationals) slow international roll outs, you’ve probably already got yourself a Google Home or two. For example, most of us at Ausdroid have at least one Google Assistant Powered Smart speaker, and Australians will be able to buy one (it seems) from next week onwards.
Until recently, to hear music from your own personal Google Play Music library you needed to have an active subscription — something which annoyed me no end because a billing stuff-up meant Google couldn’t fix my subscription up.
Today, that’s all changing with Google rolling out the ability for the Google Home to stream music from your personal Play Music catalogue. Personal catalogues include any music you have either uploaded via the Music uploader or purchases you have made on Google Play Music. For us in Australia where Google doesn’t offer a free radio service option for Play Music, the hierarchy of what music will get played is fairly simple.
Users with a GPM or YouTube RED subscription:
Purchased music, or music available with your all access subscription, will be selected first. If that doesn’t match what you’ve searched for, uploaded content will be offered.
Users without a GPM or YouTube RED subscription:
Requests for music will play directly from your own library. Of course if Play Music isn’t your default music player on the Google Home you’ll need to direct Assistant to play from GPM if you want to access your tunes, “Ok Google, play X from Google Play Music”.
The kicker to all of this is one little disclaimer from Google: “This feature is currently rolling out to all regions where Google Home is supported”. This combined with the typical Google roll out means we may not know for a few days if overseas purchased Google Homes used in Australia will support the new feature.
Of course with Google Home maybe launching here next week this could soon not be an issue.
