Google Music Tries To Read Your Mood

Google says its music tool will get smarter with playlists that take into account location, time and even the weather. It’s an attempt to bring the approach of Google Now to the Music app.

While playing your choice of music or creating playlists based on a song or artist will still work as normal, the app will also offer a set of automated playlists when its opened, complete with an explanation of why the playlist was created.

The effect of location will work on big and small scales. Fly to a new country and it may offer an introduction to the local music scene. Stay in your hometown and it will offer different playlists for shopping malls, libraries and the gym. Or at least that’s the idea.

It doesn’t seem like a tool for those worried about creeping personal data use though. The factors that affect that playlist suggestions reportedly include everything Google has on file about you, including search history and the content of your messages in Gmail.

There’ll also be an option to have the automated playlist tool download tracks for offline listening, though thankfully this will be an opt-in feature.

Google hasn’t made clear whether the new approach will only work for subscribers who get access to all of the company’s catalog, or if it will also be available for non-subscribers and create the playlists from their uploaded tracks.