Google Music Graduates from Beta
Google Music, the new service launched as a Beta at the Google I/O event earlier this year, is now open for business. If you stayed away from the new service because it carried the Beta tag, you need not do that anymore. Mountain View-based search engine giant Google announced that its Music service graduated from Beta and is available as a final, stable product.
When Google launched Music as a Beta, it explained that the service works like this: you upload your music collection to the cloud and then you can stream music from the cloud to your iDevice. The service allowed you to upload up to 20,000 songs to the cloud and did not charge anything for this.
Earlier this week, when Google announced that Music shed its Beta tag, the company’s Senior Vice President of Mobile Andy Rubin said that Music is now much more than just a service that streams music from the cloud to your iDevice. “Google Music is about discovering, purchasing, sharing and enjoying digital music in new, innovative and personalized ways,” Rubin said.
To better put things in perspective, here are the main bits and pieces you can expect to get from Google Music, from a functionality point of view:
To celebrate the launch of Music, Google is offering a lot of music for free. “We’re celebrating our launch with a variety of music that you won’t find anywhere else, much of it free. There’s something for everyone, with a variety of free tracks to choose from,” said Rubin.
Google Music represents an opportunity for artists. Via the Google Music artist hub they can distribute their music via the Google Music platform.
Please note that Google Music is available only in the US for now. Over the coming days it will be rolled out to devices powered by Android 2.2 and newer. You can learn more about Google Music here.
Here’s a video presentation of Google Music.
And here’s a video presentation of Google Music’s artist hub.
When Google launched Music as a Beta, it explained that the service works like this: you upload your music collection to the cloud and then you can stream music from the cloud to your iDevice. The service allowed you to upload up to 20,000 songs to the cloud and did not charge anything for this.
Earlier this week, when Google announced that Music shed its Beta tag, the company’s Senior Vice President of Mobile Andy Rubin said that Music is now much more than just a service that streams music from the cloud to your iDevice. “Google Music is about discovering, purchasing, sharing and enjoying digital music in new, innovative and personalized ways,” Rubin said.
To better put things in perspective, here are the main bits and pieces you can expect to get from Google Music, from a functionality point of view:
- Your entire music library is automatically synced across all your devices without messing up your playlists.
- Specify the artists, albums and playlists you want to listen to offline.
- Purchase new music; individual songs or entire albums. A new music store in the Android Market is fully integrated with Google Music. More than 13 million tracks from Universal, Sony, EMI, and other labels are available for purchase. The music you purchase will immediately be added to your Google Music library and synced across all your devices.
- Share songs with friends via Google+.
To celebrate the launch of Music, Google is offering a lot of music for free. “We’re celebrating our launch with a variety of music that you won’t find anywhere else, much of it free. There’s something for everyone, with a variety of free tracks to choose from,” said Rubin.
Google Music represents an opportunity for artists. Via the Google Music artist hub they can distribute their music via the Google Music platform.
Please note that Google Music is available only in the US for now. Over the coming days it will be rolled out to devices powered by Android 2.2 and newer. You can learn more about Google Music here.
Here’s a video presentation of Google Music.
And here’s a video presentation of Google Music’s artist hub.
