Google Glass Will Support Music Playback

Google on Tuesday announced several new Glass features that indicate the connected eyewear will also function as a music device. The new features include the ability to listen to music and search for tracks and navigate playlists via voice commands. Glass will now respond to the voice command “listen to,” which allows users to playback music through the Play app. 

“With these new features, we’re now building a great music experience on Glass, whether you’re a classical music professor, an acclaimed sound engineer and hip-hop producer, or someone who wants to listen to their favorite tunes anytime, anywhere,” Ed Sanders, the director of marketing for Google Glass, said in a statement.

Previously, Google released an app called Sound Search, which works more or less like Shazam to identify music. In addition to the new music features, Google also announced a pair of earbud headphones designed specifically for Glass that would be available for $85 by the end of November.

As part of its marketing campaign to promote Glass’ music capabilities, Google released a promotional video featuring producer and D.J. Young Guru, who has worked with artists like Rihanna and Jay Z. In the video, Young Guru uses Glass to identify a track playing in the background, and then locates the song on a vinyl record in his studio.

“It’s an immense timesaver, and a great tool to make the world that much cooler, and realize some of the dreams we had as kids,” Young Guru said in an interview on Monday with the New York Times. “For all of us who grew up watching ‘Star Trek,’ this is sort of the beginning of the holodeck.”

Glass is still in beta and available only to “Explorers” selected by Google and who purchased their eyewear for $1,500. A consumer model is expected sometime in 2014, but no solid release date has been announced so far.

The final version of Glass will likely look different than the Explorer edition currently in circulation and it’s not clear if the new earbuds are a finished product or likewise a beta.