What the app currently looks like

Many of us use Spotify or Apple music to stream the songs we love.

With these two well known services I’m sure for each of us there are features and aspects that we love, as well as things we don’t. One of the lesser known Music streaming services out there is called Google Play Music. It’s identical to the other two as far as making playlists, listening to radio stations and discovering new music to listen to. One of the key benefits that has kept me with Google play for so long is that it comes bundled with YouTube premium, and for someone who watches a lot of YouTube videos, it’s very nice not having to deal with ads.

This was also back when Spotify was not carrying any of Taylor Swifts music so, obviously, there was no point.

Ever since day one, Google play has pretty much stayed the same as far as the UI and interface. In some ways this can be a good thing, but in this case, it just means that the whole app is in dire need of a drastic overhaul.

Up above is what the music app looks like in it’s current state. These are some of the main screens that you would see navigating through the app.

Having the original layout and UI, I jumped right into making the new rendition of screens.

The home page is what you see as soon as you launch the app. It’s filled with recommendations and stations you might like depending on the songs you’ve listened to. The main issue with this screen is that the sizes of the recommendations are simply too large and at most you can see two at once. This was a simple fix in my new design by making each one into a smaller card so as to maximize the viewing of more

The Recents tab was the one of the most confusing pages due to all of the elements on screen looking almost identical, whether it be a song, album, playlist, or music station. With my new design, I organized each category by playlist, Album, Artist, and songs. This way, you know exactly what you are looking at, and everything isn’t all blended together with a similar look.

Browsing for songs and discovering new music is a huge part of what a music app is, Google play surprisingly hasn’t put much effort into making that an enjoyable experience. As soon as you tap on the browse tab it brings you to an unappealing list view of Top charts, New releases and Stations. Having that list just adds an unnecessary step of going back and forth between this screen to get to each listed category.

The new design I created got rid of the pointless list view and had you jump directly into the top charts with the other two categories always listed up at the top for easy access.

Designing a new music player was the most fun and satisfying part of the whole process, Google plays original music player had the album art zoomed in to fill the screen, much of it was cut off by doing this. The shuffle and loop buttons are very hard to see by having them directly on the album artwork. Why such a successful company like Google would make such a horrible choice in design for a music player is a mystery to me. None the less, I’m confident that this new rendition is a more user friendly version while keeping similar aspects of the older design.

Moving the icons off of the album artwork was the first decision made so as to keep the artwork clutter free, and visible.

The play queue was in an awkward place at the top, putting it down at the bottom with a swipe up to access it made it a little easier to reach.

I had a ton of fun making this application more user friendly and visually appealing. I wanted to make everything feel similar and somewhat familiar to the original design. Keeping the distinct orange color was something that I debated keeping at all. In my final rendition I decided to keep it and make it work, and I’m glad I did.

I hope that some day Google play music will get the redesign that it deserves and needs. Hope you like the new look!

Thanks for reading!

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