Google Launches Google Play Music All Access
by Saumitra Bhagwat on May 15, 2013 1:06 PM EST- Posted in
- Google IO
- Music
- Subscription
Google’s Chris Yerga took the stage this morning at the company's sixth annual I/O Conference to announce Google's own flavor of a subscription-based music service called Google Play Music All Access. All Access promises to leverage Google’s deep understanding of your preferences, listening habits and social circles to deliver a highly tailored music discovery experience.
Google aims to one up the competition by enabling users to get to their own and potentially new music (that they’ll hopefully like) as quickly and intuitively as possible. Google showed off a brief demo of the app running on Android, but the service can be accessed via a traditional web-based interface as well. The orange and white colored UI was slick and aesthetically pleasing, allowing users to instantly queue up songs and listen to personalized radio stations. The demo did however leave a lot of unanswered questions such as mobile cross-platform compatibility, support for traditional desktop operating systems and other features such as offline syncing, but we can definitely expect tight integration across all of Google's services, especially Google+.
Google Play Music All Access launches today in the United States for $9.99/month, with the promise of a gradual international rollout. There’s also a 30-day free trial and users that sign up before 30 June 2013 get a discounted rate of $7.99/month. It is unclear whether this is a lifetime or a limited time offer, but Google’s been known to be notoriously generous in the past, so we can always hope.
Although the subscription-based music streaming market is by no means nascent with heavyweights like Spotify and Rdio, Google’s undoubtedly beaten Apple to the punch here, which is long rumored to be developing its own subscription-based music service, presumably for launch later this year.
For the time being though, if you are in the US, head on over to Google Music and try All Access out for yourself.
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IVIauricius - Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - link
I literally just cancelled Spotify and signed up for All Access. I wonder if early adapters will forever be charged $7.99 or if it's only for the first month. Also, if the upload limit is increased. Not that I'll ever have over 25,000 owned songs. Spotify constantly hangs when streaming on my desktop, which is crazy. I've got All Access on radio mode and haven't skipped a beat. I'm also on T-mobile 4G LTE with unlimited data here in Dallas. :) So I've got the quality to high, rather than normal. So far so good, but I'm dreading having to create new playlists and starring my music all over again.cmdrdredd - Thursday, May 16, 2013 - link
It's forever at that discounted rate until you cancel.cmdrdredd - Thursday, May 16, 2013 - link
If you have songs in iTunes inside playlists or in Windows Media Player you can use the Music Manager application on your PC to upload those tracks and create the playlists automatically.tocket - Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - link
So... Why is it called "All Access" when it can't be accessed from 195 of the 196 countries in the world?Bob Todd - Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - link
I assumed it was because if you happen to be in that one country, you can access it from all of your devices (phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, etc.). The "all access" branding is used by other services in the US with the same meaning (e.g. http://www.siriusxm.com/siriusallaccess). Speaking of satellite radio, I have no idea how they are going to keep charging ridiculous rates for abysmal sound quality with so many good streaming options cropping up. The stations I listened to while I had a free trial in my car sounded like a 48kbps mp3 being played through a mono Bluetooth speaker sitting in a bathtub.And people really need to get over services from any company not launching globally on day one. It's not like they sign one agreement and the whole world is magically covered. You have to deal with both regional and country specific realities when you are rolling out services like this (or Kindle or anything else).
Friendly0Fire - Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - link
It's not about "day one". The exceedingly large majority of music and film services are heavily restricted. As someone located an hour or two from the US border, it's really pissing me off that I can't get convenient music and movie access. Heck, even buying music is complicated. Netflix Canada sucks so bad. Amazon doesn't distribute MP3s to Canada. Hulu doesn't work. Pandora doesn't work. Spotify doesn't work. I could go on.And then the RIAA and co. wonder why people turn to piracy. Well derp.
smitty123 - Thursday, May 16, 2013 - link
ok so, let me get this straight, does this 10$ a month get me any song any artist and i don't have to buy them?or do i pay 10$ a month for the luxury of streaming my music, that i also have to buy and stream only on my computer ?
What's the point ?
i think i'd rather buy individual mp3's once and listen to them anytime anywhere i want.
cmdrdredd - Thursday, May 16, 2013 - link
You never have to buy. You can pick a song by any artist in the catalog (which is very big and always expanding) and you can play it. Wanna play the whole CD? No problem...you can even shuffle it. Wanna start a radio station that has music that is similar to a specific artist no problem. The bonus is you can see what music is in the queue and you can selectively move and delete individual tracks before they play. Pandora only lets you skip the song once it plays and you never know what will play. With this you can see what's coming up and thumbs down it if it doesn't match before it even gets there. You can also upload 20,000 of your own music from your PC to their server and stream that from any device anywhere. It will also integrate iTunes or Windows Media Player playlists to your library for you. Then you can find new music that you don't own and add it to a playlist. For example, nobody streams AC/DC so I uploaded the entire catalog from my own MP3s. Then I made a playlist called "Hard Rock" and added some of my favorite AC/DC tracks, then I searched for Van Halen which I only own a few CDs from and searched their catalog and added it to my custom playlist. So I have some of my own music and some of theirs in a single play list. It's pretty cool.cmdrdredd - Thursday, May 16, 2013 - link
Oh and if you want to buy and own it to make a CD or download it to your PC or phone or something you can. You just don't really have to. It also syncs through your google account so your Google TV, Android Tablet, Android Phone, PC can all stream your playlists. You can also download your library to a new device(the music you own and have uploaded).ct760ster - Thursday, May 16, 2013 - link
Nuff say spam :(