[Updated] Google Assistant team investigating Android Auto-Google Play Music issue

Update (August 03):

Google confirms the fix will be arriving soon.

I have some good news regarding this feature. We will be rolling out an update, and you will be able to see artist playback, album playback and all uploaded content that was unmatched, fixed. Woohoo! Thanks for your patience while we build and implement this fix.

Update (March 10):

For what it’s worth, Google has provided another heads up on the matter, and here’s what they said:

I can confirm that this issue is being looked into separately for Android Auto and am checking with that team for more specific updates. For Android & iOS devices, the fix has taken longer than expected to be pushed live, but we’re still confident it will resolve the issue. I know it’s already been quite delayed, but we’re hopeful this will happen soon.

Update (March 1): Andy from Google has provided a heads up on this today. Here’s what he said:

Thanks for your many reports on this issue, and apologies for the lack of progress updates. We’ve been actively investigating since this was first reported, and debugging turned out to be more complex than originally anticipated. We do hope to have a fix in place shortly though and will let you know as soon as there is more news to share.

You can access their comment here.

Update (February 20):

A couple of Redditors say adding “……..from my library” to the voice commands fixed the glitch for them. But it’s worth mentioning that the use-case they are discussing doesn’t involve Android Auto.

Original story:

A couple of weeks back, mainstream tech media highlighted Google Assistant’s advent on Android Auto, for it’s no more a mere voice search now. However, looks like the change has broken an existing feature. Users say the ability to use Assistant to play music from Google Play Music has gone out of order, something which has happened in the past week or so.

Going by what’s being chimed on the Android Auto user community, on using a voice command to listen to a song downloaded/purchased from Google Play Music, Assistant throws a message saying this is only available to Google Play Music subscribers, and plays a related radio station instead.

Take a look at how some of the complainants word the issue :

The same issue is being discussed on Reddit as well, where a user also shared a video which doesn’t have Android Auto in picture, but Google Home Mini accessing Google play music through Assistant. Apart from several other difficulties, the video highlights (05:47 on wards) the error scenario we are discussing in this article.

So seemingly, the issue is not with Android Auto, but Google Assistant instead, as Google Home users are also affected by it. Meanwhile, Android Auto users have been voicing the problem on Twitter as well.

https://twitter.com/jmcdonnell20/status/954425813654474752
https://twitter.com/tim_ehat/status/954404370803650560
https://twitter.com/djwaido/status/956304216431054848

Soon after complaints started pouring, Google swung into action inquiring what the actual issue was. And this morning, Google employee Yurrim (from Android Auto team) updated the troubled users on one of the relevant threads saying that the matter is being investigated by the Google Assistant team.

Hi all, The Google Assistant team is investigating this issue. Thanks for your patience

A short and crisp message, but at least relieving for those affected, as the concerned team is on it. While the problem has been brought to Google notice, there’s no information as to how long will it take to fix what’s broken. We hope the company debugs the glitch, and fixes it sooner than later. While they do it, we are keeping a close watch on all related developments for you, and will update as and when anything news-worthy occurs.

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