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Google Music Officially Released

By Hafeez Sim - on 17 Nov 2011, 9:51am

Google Music Officially Released

Google Music was offered, to much fanfare, to invited users back in May. About a million people in the U.S. requested for the invitation and managed to test the service in its Beta stage. The service allowed for users to upload their digital music to the cloud and then playback the songs on computers and Android devices.

And in a bid to make the service available to a wider audience, Google has finally moved its digital music store out of beta. Users can buy songs from the Android Market as Google rolls out the service over the next few days to its U.S. customers, though Google aims to bring the service to global Android users over time.

At the moment, Google Music is offering songs from three of the four major recording companies: Universal Music, EMI and Sony Music, as well as from a legion of independent labels. The total number of tracks available will amount to about 13 million.

And Google Music also features tight integration with Google's own social network, Google+. Users can share purchased songs with friends being able to listen to full tracks without leaving the user's profile.

Songs that are bought via Google Music are automatically uploaded for free into an online locker. The song can also be streamed over internet browsers, be it computer or mobile ones. If you're using the Google Music app, then you can stream stored songs or choose to download them to your Android device for offline playback.

And to further compete with the iTunes Music Store, Google is offering the cloud storage service for free for up to 20,000 songs as opposed to Apple's $25 per annum cost.

And that's not all, songs are priced at 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29, the exact same price as their iTunes counterparts.

Source: Associated Press

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