Our Google Play Wishlist

Also, a unicorn.

Here are eight features that we'd like to see added to the Google Play music application.

1. Your music on multiple devices, like for real
For instance, having the option to pause your music on one device and pick back up on another. Even better would be the ability to hear the same stream on multiple devices at the same time. Imagine loading up your favorite playlist and playing it on every device in the house during a get-together, doing away with the need for an expensive house-wide wireless speaker system. If Google or the music industry is afraid of users using this for anything other than personal use, it would be very simple to limit its use to the same IP address and username.

2. Volume Control
If you listen to shuffled playlists of many different albums and artists combined, you've probably noticed that some tracks might sound softer than they're supposed to, especially compared to other music in your collection. Sure, you can turn your speakers up when a soft or poorly mastered song comes on, though you run the risk of being deafened by the next track being played at full volume. The ability to normalize music that has loudness or softness issues would be a valuable feature for many users. A simple implementation of this would be to place a checkbox on the edit song dialog as shown below, so that music that is intentionally soft won't be affected.

3. End the silence
The ability to automatically detect or manually trim off unwanted silence at the start or end of songs that have them would also be handy. There are some albums that would sound strange without their intended breaks, so an off/on function would probably be necessary. If the last song on an album has a secret track, the ability to remove the long silence in between them would save many playlists from mysterious five minute lulls.

4. Wishes for Instant Mixes
More control over the parameters used to create these special playlists would make the feature much more useful. Right now Instant Mixes can only be created using one particular song as your initial seed. Other seeds that we would like to see are mixes based on specific artists, genres, or even a combination of all of those factors. It would also be useful if you could control the length of the mixes. At the moment it caps off at about an hour and a half. The ability to create longer or shorter mixes based on how long you need it to be would be great. Our last request would be for the ability to edit your Instant Mixes. Sometimes they aren't perfect, so being able to add or delete a couple of songs is sometimes mandatory. It is possible to do this manually by transferring their contents to a playlist, detailed in our article on getting the most out of your Instant Mixes.

5. More tagging options
When you upload MP3s that use fields not included in the Play app, such as Comments or Beats Per Minute, this information is seemingly erased. Hopefully this information has been preserved for later use, as it would be a pain to re-enter every single missing tag twice.

Editing tags with dBpoweramp

The ability to add searchable tags of your own design would also be cool. You could add things like sub-genres, labels and moods if you use them, without cluttering up the interface for those who don't. You could even sort your music by the hair color of its drummer! The possibilities!

6. Tag Cleanup System
Most of the information about the music you listen to, including album artwork, is already available in Google's databases. Joining forces with a company like Gracenote, who specialize in this particular task would be even better. If you own a lot of albums that have missing or incorrect tags, if you don't have the time to do it yourself, an automatic feature that cleans them up for you would be a life-saver.

7. Music by year or decade
While you are able to add a year to individual tracks and albums, there isn't a way to sort your music by this tag. Even the search function ignores the year tag, so hopefully this will be fixed in a future update.

8. Better uploads and downloads
Since the Play terms of service dictates that you only upload files that you legally own, there is no reason NOT to give you full access to your music, including downloading abilities. You are able to download your music as many times as needed, but you have to download every single song you've ever uploaded every single time, even if you just need a copy of one album.

You are able to download individual albums and songs through the web interface, but only twice, after which the only way to retrieve them is by using the Music Manager software. Even if you only want to upload one song, the only way to do so is by using the same software. You should be able to upload or download your legally owned collection as many times as you need, through an easy-to-use web interface. As reported by the website Google Operating System, there is currently a blank placeholder page for an uploads page, though it obviously doesn't contain any functionality. Coming soon?