Google today officially announced its new music subscription service, Google Play Music All Access, at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco. As reported yesterday afternoon, the service is designed to compete with Spotify, providing songs on demand that can be streamed to a computer or mobile device.
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The service, which is built on Google's existing Google Play Music Store, will cost $9.99 per month with a 30-day free trial available. Google is, however, offering a discount for early adopters. Those who begin the free trial by June 30 will pay just $7.99 per month. The Verge has a rundown on a few of the available features for music discovery and recommendations.
A recommendation engine will guide users towards new music they may have already discovered. As demoed on an Android device — it also works in a standard web browser — All Access incorporates both local tracks and those available for streaming into one master searchable library, a marked improvement over much of its streaming competition.
Google's tagline for Google Play Music All Access is "Radio without Rules," a small jab at Apple's upcoming Pandora-style music service, iRadio. As of last week, Apple was still in negotiations with music labels but is reportedly aiming for a summer launch of its own music subscription service.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)See no point in paying for music when things like Pandora are free.
but Pandora sucks. you cant simply play what you want i always end up just skipping till i reach the limit cuz it never plays what i want.
this has the best of both "worlds" like Spotify which i will stick with cuz it does not get added to my data volume on my iPhone.
gonna laugh if apple announces "iRadio" when everyone else offers both in one deal
Times have certainly changed.
I find it funny that people think spending $120 a year on music is a lot...
Times have certainly changed.
Same people B*tch about apps that cost more than free - or .99
See no point in paying for music when things like Pandora are free.
A lot of people don't like listening to single songs by different artists and instead want to hear albums. Pandora is completely useless to someone like me, free or not. I'll gladly pay $10 a month for access to many hundreds of thousands of full albums. This is why Apple's offering, if it's modelled after Pandora, is going to be a non-starter for me. No albums, no deal.Not interested on paying 10 bucks a month... oh well.!
That's completely fine for you. I, on the other hand, find my Spotify subscription to be indispensable. For $120/year, I can stream unlimited albums at 320 kbps bitrate with no ads. It's the world's jukebox. I've probably listened to 100 different albums in the last months alone. For that price, I could buy 12 albums on iTunes. Sure, you own the music with iTunes and you all are free to choose that route.
But I'd rather have unlimited access to hundreds of thousands of albums instead.
When you create a radio station - can you swipe/remove songs in the play list?
Nice function of Google's offering
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So the big news at Google Uh/Oh is a Spotify copy? There is nothing compelling here to make anyone switch from Spotify.
Why does there have to be something to switch people? Is everyone ON spotify?Second - the reason why some might switch is because they like Google's ecosystem and want a one stop shop. This provides that.
Also - I don't think you can access your entire music library anywhere via spotify. Right? With Google's service - you can - in addition to millions of tracks