Google Play Music is now the default music service on new Samsung phones, tablets

By Julian Chokkattu Published April 20, 2017

Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus are finally available and, as usual, you can expect to find a good number of Samsung apps pre-installed. Like last year with the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, though, you’ll find no Samsung Music app — that honor goes to Google Play Music, thanks to a partnership agreement between the two companies.

Google Play Music is a streaming service like Spotify and Apple Music, and while there is a free version, a subscription will get you full access to more than 40 million songs. Going forward, Google and Samsung said that Play Music will be the default music player and streaming service on all new Samsung phones and tablets. That’s huge news for Google — Samsung is the largest Android smartphone maker, and this partnership could give a big boost to subscriber numbers.

Recommended Videos

Owners of new Samsung devices will get some extra perks: The free music upload limit has been upped to 100,000, rather than the 50,000 songs a regular paying or nonpaying subscriber can upload, and new Samsung phones and tablets will offer a free three-month trial of Google Play Music. Subscribing to Google Play Music means you are signed up for YouTube Red, which offers ad-free access to YouTube, as well as special programming. New Samsung device owners will be able to take advantage of this as well.

As announced at Samsung Unpacked, where the company debuted the Galaxy S8, Google Play Music will also work with Bixby, Samsung’s new artificially intelligent assistant. Only a handful of Samsung apps work with Bixby, so Google Play Music integration will likely open the door to other third-party services. This will launch later in the spring alongside Bixby Voice.

If you don’t want to use Google Play Music, Samsung’s music-playing app is still available on the Play Store for download. Again, these Samsung-exclusive features are only available for new Samsung phones and tablets, and it does not affect existing devices.

Julian Chokkattu

Former Mobile and Wearables Editor

Julian is the mobile and wearables editor at Digital Trends, covering smartphones, fitness trackers, smartwatches, and more…

Topics

Phones

Fake stalking apps racked million of downloads. It says a lot about Google’s security and us

I Spy Podcast

There is no app that lets you pull up someone else's call history. There never has been, and there almost certainly never will be — carriers don't expose that data, and no third-party developer has the access required to retrieve it. This is not a grey area; it is simply not possible. And yet, 7.3 million people, according to welivesecurity have downloaded apps that claimed to do exactly that.

Security researchers at ESET spent months untangling a sprawling family of 28 fraudulent Android apps they collectively dubbed CallPhantom — apps that promised users a window into anyone's phone activity: call logs, SMS records, even WhatsApp history. Enter a number, pay a small fee, and the secrets of whoever you were looking up would supposedly come spilling out. What actually came out was fiction — random phone numbers dressed up with hardcoded names and timestamps, generated by the app itself, designed to look just convincing enough to seem real. The payoff is that users only saw this fake data after they'd already paid. That sequencing wasn't accidental.

Phones

This could be the final form of the iPhone 18 Pro, and it’s expectedly boring

Electronics, Speaker, Phone

We’re already in May, which means the next big iPhone season is slowly getting closer. In just a few months, iPhone 18 Pro will finally step into the spotlight, and I can’t deny it, I still get excited every year when a new iPhone launch approaches. There’s something fun about the buildup, the leaks, the keynote anticipation, and all the speculation that comes with it.

But recently, a new video from Jon Prosser at Front Page Tech gave us what could be an early look at the upcoming Pro model, and honestly, it left me a little underwhelmed. If these renders are even somewhat accurate, the phone feels way too familiar. It does not look bad or unattractive; it just looks safe in a way that makes it hard to feel excited about. At first glance, it barely feels like a new-generation iPhone at all.

Phones

Samsung gave Galaxy S25 users One UI 8.5, but skipped the features they wanted most

Galaxy S25 users are learning that updates do not always mean new features

The back of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Samsung's stable One UI 8.5 software has finally started reaching Galaxy S25 series devices after initially being introduced alongside the Galaxy S26 lineup in February.

The update adds several new features, including upgraded Photo Assist, smarter Quick Share, Audio Broadcast, Storage Share, and new security tools. But it also leaves out several Galaxy S26 features that many Galaxy S25 users were expecting. Unsurprisingly, it has left many of them disappointed.