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Play Music 7.4 adds ‘Recents’ to navigation drawer, now has 40 million songs in library

Version 7.4 of Google Play Music is currently rolling out with a number of minor changes, including a spiffy new play animation. This update also adds ‘Recents’ to the navigation drawer.

Play Music’s last major update in November added machine learning features for personalized and contextual song recommendations. However, it significant complicated the app’s design by just grafting on a new homescreen while keeping and even duplicating other sections.

Since then, there have been two different ways to view your recently played albums. The latest one is accessible from the top right corner of the new homescreen, but has one notable downside. In ‘Downloaded only’ mode, users are just presented with a list of albums in the order they were stored for offline playback.

To add to the confusion, an older Recents section that features a chronological view, regardless of mode, is still accessible through an app shortcut on newer devices.

In version 7.4, Play Music slightly remedies the issue for people who frequently use the app offline by adding the old Recents to the navigation drawer. Unfortunately, the app is still an organizational mess of different interface designs.

Other changes this version include a new animation when pressing the ‘play’ icon from the album view. Up from 35 million, Play Music also lists in settings that it now has 40 million songs in its subscription library.

This update is rolling out now via the Play Store.

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com