Today, with a change that targets Apple Music directly and is due to launch later this month, Google has made its biggest move in music to date. on google this morning announced The popular Google Play Music service will be completely free with ads for those who don’t want to pay the regular $9.99 monthly fee.
Google Play Music is getting more and more popular every day, with millions of songs available to users, a free song of the day every day, and a storage limit of 50,000 songs on Google Cloud. Making all this completely free is a big change and will get straight to Apple’s latest music release.
Google made an announcement this morning confirming that users can get almost any song they want, absolutely free, with Google Music. Taylor Swift is probably not too happy with this news, but it’s a big move that should make both Android and iPhone owners happy because Google Music works on both platforms.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the full Google Play Music All Access with on-demand streaming of any song, similar to the $9.99 per month option. Instead, this new free ad-supported model is for up to 50,000 user-uploaded songs and Google’s self-selected music radio stations. Basically providing users with free radio broadcasting.
This is ad-supported radio broadcast similar to Pandora or Songza that Google recently acquired. Users can subscribe to and listen to free music streaming radio stations. Here’s what Google had to say in its announcement this afternoon.
From work to exercise to working on the dance floor, Google Play Music has everything you need music for every moment of the day, giving you curated radio stations to make what you do better. Our team of music experts, The people who created the Songzamakes each station song by song so you don’t have to. If you’re looking for something specific, you can browse our curated stations by genre, mood, decade or event, or search for your favorite artist, album or song and instantly create a station of similar music.”
Users will not be able to create their own playlists, save music for offline listening, or search and play more than 30 million songs available on Google Play. Instead, this is free radio play. It’s a bit confusing, but hopefully more details will be available for those interested when the Android and iOS app launches this week.
To be precise, this is not Google Music All Access free with ads, this is free Google Play Music radio streaming. Instead of All Access or on-demand full access to all Spotify-like music, Google sticks to radio-like playlists. It’s an interesting approach, and it’s probably aimed at letting users enjoy the music and eventually signing up for Google Music All Access for $9.99 a month.
The biggest thing users need to know is that with this free model, they won’t have full control over the music played. You will be able to skip songs (up to 6 per hour) and not create your own playlists, but listen to radio stations hand-compiled by Google.
Google’s new ad-supported free Music option available on the web launches today and will be available for Android and iOS later this week. We will update it once the app is released and we have additional details.
