> Never again will you have to hunt through your tabs to pause your music,
> Supports media keys (play, pause, stop, next, previous)
A relatively recent Chrome feature that many aren't aware of is the ability of extensions and apps to use Chrome- or desktop-wide (global) hotkeys. So if you're using the Google Play Music extension, you can, for example, hook it up to your media keys and it will work even when Chrome isn't focused. Go to chrome://extensions/ and scroll down the Keyboard shortcuts to learn more.
(I'm sure that there are many other reasons people prefer desktop apps, but this was the big one for me.)
There are also extensions that helps with this. If you have media keys it allows you to use those regardless of focus. Plus you can get popups on song change or other various settings.
> Never again will you have to hunt through your tabs to pause your music, or stop listening to your favourite song because Chrome is guzzling up all your RAM..
Yeah just yesterday I was looking for something to play Google Music through on my new MBP, found Radiant, saw it required Flash and proceeded to move on. I'm on a 14 day trial of Gear Player, which seems nice but seems lacking for how I interact with my music.
It works well enough, has album art views, something I do want as a feature, but Radiant has a nicer overall UI (IMO), has a mini player that I can tuck away in the corner somewhere, and has the ability to add new playlists within the app. Installing flash is that much of a dealbreaker for me.
You should check again; it's tucked under the labs section but there's an HTML5 audio player available as a Flash alternative. Doesn't work in Safari though.
> Never again will you have to hunt through your tabs to pause your music
Not exactly the same thing, but in Chrome, you can enable "Tab audio muting UI control" in chrome://flags which allows you to click the speaker icon on tabs that play music to mute it. Click again to unmute. Very handy for when you get a phone call!
FWIW there is a standard in the works (Media Session [1]) that will enable various use cases[2] for web app users to control with media keys, headphone buttons, from lock screen, notification area, ducking for phone calls etc
When does a 'desktop app' become a 'bastardised web' (sic). Is it when it communicates via http? When it renders HTML? Lots of apps that you may be running (e.g. iTunes, the Mac app store) do this. If it's well integrated with the host OS, I don't see what the problem is; would you rather it weren't cross-platform, or it used another cross-platform framework, or it were several separate codebases?
That doesn't make it any less useful--even though I find it a bit unnecessary. To note, that a program like that can be made within 10 minutes in Visual Studio (there is a video on Yt for a similar one integrating Fb Messenger).
I encourage all open source projects so this is cool. That said, I just open Play Music in a new Chrome window, not a tab, and use the keyboard to switch between Chrome Windows and other apps. Easy enough. I also sometimes have my iPad Pro running music while I work on my laptop.
Heyyyyyy ... http://i.imgur.com/VucG9gy.png ... That's basically Spotify (desktop application). The resemblance being so high makes this a little iffy, and suggests this project won't stay up (at least in its present form) for too long.
That said, why hasn't Google yet created a desktop application for Google Play Music? It's mind-boggling to me. I would love to ditch Spotify (primarily because 1) I don't like its searching/discovery UI, and 2) its desktop application is slow and buggy as well)
>That said, why hasn't Google yet created a desktop application for Google Play Music?
I don't understand the need (and I guess that Google does not either).
Is it because you need an offline mode ? That's the only addition I can think of.
With the play music chrome extension, the website responds to media keys, so outside of a dedicated app icon in the tray (even though the miniplayer has one), I don't see what a desktop app would bring.
Even without extensions, those things are possible or will soon be possible[1] on the web out of the box (except tray icon but persistent notification with actions can be done to achieve something similar).
The only reason Spotify needs the ability to play local music is to play music that is not on Spotify. Most other services, including this Google one, let you upload your collection to play on any device.
Ok, maybe I worded that to strongly. It is a great feature as an option, but IMHO the software should still be able to use local files if they are available.
This is Electron-based, but it looks a lot more integration than a normal Electron skin. I consider it may be worth looking into especially with the media button integration.
> Supports media keys (play, pause, stop, next, previous)
A relatively recent Chrome feature that many aren't aware of is the ability of extensions and apps to use Chrome- or desktop-wide (global) hotkeys. So if you're using the Google Play Music extension, you can, for example, hook it up to your media keys and it will work even when Chrome isn't focused. Go to chrome://extensions/ and scroll down the Keyboard shortcuts to learn more.
(I'm sure that there are many other reasons people prefer desktop apps, but this was the big one for me.)