Source
r/google•
Solution68

Using Google Assistant to voice control play music, results often suck.

I've been using Google Assistant to search for and play songs on Play Music while I'm driving, but I've been having issues with the search algorithms, and it gives me something totally different from what I asked for. I'm wondering if anyone knows ways to improve search results. A few examples of things that have happened:

  • I say "Play Death Star by Before the Dawn" (which is a song in my library) and instead it plays a mix based on the song Death Star by Moby, despite the fact that I have no Moby in my library. This is an example, it does this pretty often when I specify a song title and artist.
  • Sometimes it will also play a mix based on the song I've searched rather than the song itself, even though the song is in my library.
  • Some song titles or artist names aren't real words, so I have to spell them out. And then it autocorrects them. So, I'll say "Play B-I-L-E-D-R-I-V-E-R by G-W-A-R" and it will show me a search result about piledrivers. Or, even beyond just spelling, context. I say "Play Soilwork" and it shows me search results for clay soil work.
  • This is probably more of a technical issue, but sometimes I'll pause a song, input a voice command to play a different song which it seems to accept, but then it just brings Play Music to the foreground and doesn't actually perform a search.

Posted May 6, 2017, 1:55 PM UTC

9310
rburkej•

On an aside, you have a good taste in music.

11
BiologyJ•

You can select the default place it searches for music to play. It defaults to YouTube. You can set it to your library first.

7
Solution68OP•

I can't seem to find where this setting is. Do you remember off the top of your head?

7
BiologyJ•

Either settings>Apps>Default Apps or GoogleHome>Music>Google Play Music. I have a Google Home and Chromecasts so this is an option for me in the Google Home app. You should also be able to do this in the app settings if you want to select an app as the default app.

2
Rediwed•

No way to set Spotify as default though.

1
mediocre_sophist•

Related: I always ask it to play my local radio station and without fail it will play a completely unrelated "Google play music radio station"

So. Frustrating.

4
tolga7t•

Nothing constructive to add, but I always had issues using voice commands to control music, so you're definitely not alone. I just gave up over time :/

2
ath1337•

Same problems here. You would think with all the advancements that Google is making you would be able to use a voice command to play a specific song that is a available in the Play Music Library...

2
All_hail_Korrok•

Upvote for Gwar.

I'm having the same problems and the songs I have are not that technical. For some reason assistant likes to hear something that's not remotely close to what I asked.

1
nstalker91•

In response to playing biledriver by gear, and had no issues without spelling it. So if your not able to get it to play songs it knows about, it might be having troubles hearing you. Be it "mush mouth" (words sounding mushy because they are going through a microphone) or ambient noise is making it difficult. Might have to play around with pronunciation till you find what it expects. The rest just seems to be the way it was programmed, but I don't have anything uploaded to my library since I have a subscription to play music.

1
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1