Songza, the curated music recommendation service, was bought by Google back in July and quickly rolled into Google Play Music over in the US. From this very moment, UK users can start enjoying the same benefits.
The new 'Music Concierge' feature, which will be available to all subscribers of Google Play Music and YouTube Music Key beta, recommends playlists depending on the time of day or what you're doing.
On opening Play Music on Android, iOS or the web you'll now be greeted with suggestions based on predictions of what you're doing at that very moment. For example, it may say: "It's Wednesday morning - play music for 'Singing in the shower', 'Commuting' or 'The school run'."
Choosing one of these will offer up a selection of more specific playlists. Songza told us that the team has a number of UK-based curators, and - no joke - Brits get a 'Wallowing in self-pity' playlist especially. "Our editors in London felt very strongly about this situation and told us very early on that having a wallowing in self-pity situation was as British as possible," said Songza founder Elias Roman in a chat with TechRadar.
Context is key
Each 'station' is curated by Songza's team of music lovers, from DJs to musicians to music critics, in the hope that you'll better find music that suits your current state of mind. You can edit these curated playlists if you so wish - or save them offline for later listening in up to 320kbps quality - and, as ever, you can also start a station based on any song in the mix.
"The task of Music Concierge is to understand what you the user are doing that you need music for, and serving the music that's going to make that better," said Roman.
The new contextually-aware feature brings Google's Now service to mind, although right now the two services aren't integrated - however Songza co-founder Elias Roman said it was on their mind.
"We don't think the future of content in general is people having to find things, we think it's things finding people. And the most important reason for a piece of content to find a person is their context - is it relevant for what they're doing and feeling at that moment. So platforms like Google Now, which are context driven, are really exciting for us."
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