Google Play Music Adds An Exclusive Feature For Galaxy S8

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Google Play Music was already the default music player on the Galaxy S8, and now, it has come up with an exclusive feature for Samsung’s latest flagships. The new feature called New Release Radio, as the name suggests, offers the latest music releases and is customized per the user’s choice. The list is updated daily with new titles.

Strengthening bond between Google and Samsung

In 2014, the Korean firm came up with its own digital music service called Milk Music, which worked similar to Pandora’s personal radio service. However, Samsung’s service failed to get much traction and was not able to compete with other on-demand services like Apple Music and Spotify. Though Samsung tried its best to keep the service alive with the acquisition of Tidal, it eventually closed it altogether in September 2016 to focus on its core services, notes Variety.

At that time, the Korean firm made its intentions of partnering with other music services clear, and now we know Google is that partner. Samsung and Google initially came together in April, making Google Play Music the default player on Samsung’s flagship. Now with this exclusive feature, the search giant is working to strengthen the bond.

The initial partnership allowed Samsung phone and tablet owners to save about 100,000 songs in their Play Music for free, which is double the usual limit allowed. The smartphone owners were given a free three-month trial to the service. The subscription gave users access to ad-free track playing, more than 40 million songs on demand and curated playlists. It also allowed users to stream ad-free videos across YouTube via YouTube Red.

How New Release Radio and Play Music could help Google?

Going ahead, Google has already said that it will support Samsung’s Bixby assistant with its music streaming service. Just weeks ago, the search giant announced one extra free month in addition to the three-month free trial for new subscribers to the Play Music service, notes PhoneArena.

Clearly, Google’s objective in bringing this exclusive feature to the Galaxy S8 is to benefit from the Galaxy S8 lineup’s strong sales, thereby expediting the adoption rate of its music streaming platform. If the Internet giant succeeds in its effort, it will help it in competing with rivals like Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora.

New Release Radio is surely a useful feature if you are a Google Play Music subscriber, but we will have to wait to see if it is enough to lure users from Spotify or Apple Music. Nevertheless, Google will have to keep updating the app and bring it to more smartphones (non-Samsung) to convince more users to make a switch.

As of now, the feature is only available to Galaxy S8/S8+ users, and there is no information on if it will debut on other phones. But some Reddit users are saying they are able to use the new feature on non-Samsung devices by adding it to the library using the desktop version of the webpage, notes AndroidAuthority.

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