For all Google Music’s charms and its drawbacks, there’s still places where it could improve. According to Google Operating System, it soon will: Google Play Music is set to get a Labs function, just like a handful of other Google services like Gmail and the Android browser. You can see a placeholder section for the Labs experimental features right now, though at the moment it’s empty. The folks at Google Operating System dug around the HTML and CSS code for this and other pages and got a pretty good idea of what’s in store.
First of all, it looks like the desktop Music Manager upload tool will soon be augmented with a browser-based counterpart. That should make it a lot easier to upload just an album or two when you want to add some quick music for streaming. Some of the code indicates that you’ll also be able to specify album artwork with the uploads. Another section labelled “History” should be a list of the song’s you’ve player (natch) similar to the ones found on desktop music players. Some integrated statistics should give feedback on how often you play individual songs and artists.
If and when these features make it to Google Music it’ll go a long way towards making it a more legitimate competitor to discrete jukebox managers. Of course, Google rolls out Labs updates without any particular schedule or consistency, so there’s no knowing how long it’ll take before the Labs page is updated. There’s no indication that the Google Music app will be getting a Labs function, but a few of the features spotted should integrate with the mobile version.
