Rocking November introduced Google as a cloud-powered music player as well as music retailer with Goooooogle Musiiiiic! Google Incorporation opens its Online music store in form of Google Music which offers great storage service to store personal collections in the Internet “cloud” to listen them for FREE at any time on smartphones, tablet computers or other gadgets. Moreover, save the storage space of Android device with Google Music, as it offers a virtual storage locker of “cloud“ to store songs on the server directly instead of on device itself. Besides, Google’s emerging social network, Google+, enables customers to share their favorite music with their friends and group at no cost.
Google needs no introduction, as it is the giant, Internet search engine of the globe and this time it has added Music sync in Android 2.3 Gingerbread and built a new music store into the Android Market. Everyone knows that Android is currently the number one smartphone operating system which is running about 200 million devices worldwide. Without music service, none of Android-based device can attract consumers who are looking for a seamless media experience. Moreover, recent trend of “the cloud” may compel Google, Apple and other companies to adapt such new way of cloud playing to keep users connected with their respective mobile services.
Google Music store can run through the Android Market, the place from where Android-based device users can buy apps, videos and e-books. Users can browse songs, play samples and make purchases of new music in single tracks or full albums on Android Market or at market.android.com. Later on, these purchased songs will be appeared on the Google Music pages or in Android Music app so that users can listen them anytime by using Google Music.
Google Music consists of over 13 million songs that can be accessed through the Android Market. The service supports not only MP3 and AAC type files but also supports a WMA, OGG, and FLAC formats that is obviously more than its competitors, iTunes and Amazon Cloud Player. Google Music charges 99 cents to download one single song from Google’s Android Market.
Users just need to download Music Manager App from the Google Music site which scans PC or Mac for music files and the same upload to their Google music account of cloud-based music locker. With Google Music service, there is no need of any cables and file transfers because users can effortlessly sync their entire music library (includes both purchased and uploaded songs) from computer to the phone (and the web) to spend more time in listening to their collection instead of wasting their time in managing it. Google allow users to store some songs on a mobile device for offline listening also.
In case phone’s memory is not enough to handle music library then new clouds service is great option as it enables users with their entire library anywhere by making it accessible from a web browser of mobile device too. Google music allow Android users to store up to 20,000 songs for free on its cloud account, where as Apple charges $24.99 to store 25,000 songs and Amazon charges $20 per year for unlimited clouding play but Free up to 5 GB also. Thus, Google music is only the cheaper way for clouding than its competitors, not only this, it is also Free to listen the collection stored at the Google music Cloud while other competitive cloud music services would charge something for listening their stored collection.
Google Music is an expansion of Music Beta, first launched music product and test version of Google Music, which introduced in May. It also store and access songs on Google’s servers and allow users to listen to them on any device or computer for free. At that time, some of the labels would not agree to special licenses which allowed Google to offer more features. Still Google has signed three major record labels such as Universal, EMI, and Sony Music excluding one of Warner Music, the fourth major record company whose artists include Led Zeppelin and Prince, among others. The lack of soundtracks from Warner Music will bound the demand of Google Music.
Google Music has a social component of Google+ also, at where users can share one play per song with their friends or groups, it is almost similarly to Facebook’s recent integrations of Rdio and Spotify. Users can share only purchased and “free, full-play” songs with friends on the Google+ social network. Google Music is not the traditional online music store but includes interesting twists like music discovery function to choose the songs according to the tastes of your Google+ circles. Another incentive for users is that it will offer one free song for users to download on a daily basis.
Google Music also performs as a digital distributor to artists who do not have deals through any of music companies or labels to get their music on services. For them, Google Music offers golden opportunity of “Artist’s Hub” which allows musicians to set up Android Market pages to post and distribute their music directly to fans at their self decided price. It means artists can control the pricing for each song, and songs can be sold directly against their YouTube channels.
It is not as easy as today, because earlier all those artists had to go through a digital distributor like TuneCore to get their music on services. Keep in mind that Google music charges $25 to set up account and 30% of total profit sharing to sell their music, where as TuneCore, another digital distributor does not cost anything to artist’s revenue from selling their music.
Unfortunately, this service is currently open to users in the U.S. only. So, this may be proven one type of drawback to the company, as TuneCore’s users can get advantage of worldwide distribution while Google Music remains with limited outlets available in the U.S. right now. It really seems a stupid thing if you are TuneCore’s users and going to be Google Music as here you need to split your music sales revenue for the limited outlets.
Google guts to design its own digital music store in a direct challenge to Apple’s iTunes and Amazon’s online shop. No doubt that Apple and Amazon have more efficient system of clouding than what Google offers. But, the great thing about the site is that cloud backup is absolutely Free at Google Music. Another perk includes Google+ social network for Free sharing and Artist’s Hub to promote aspiring music artists as the site allows musicians to make customized pages almost like an independent label. If you want to know about the deep comparison of these three companies then visit huffingtonpost.com.
Video of Introducing Google Music from youtube:
