Google Play Music Hits United States, Offers Free Music Streaming

By

Streaming music is proving to be one of the biggest developments in entertainment in a long time. With a host of companies already involved in the practice like Spotify and Pandora, and others stepping in, like Apple Music, it's a field that's likely to have plenty of competitors vying for the ears of listeners. Google, meanwhile, is throwing its hat in the ring with Google Play Music, which recently launched a free version in the United States.

Google Play Music has already been around quite some time, reports note, as a subscription service in which users pay to listen to unlimited quantities of musical tracks. The free version, meanwhile, will offer a set of curated playlists geared toward different times of day and different events going on at those times. Possible events covered include “cleaning the house,” “driving” or “entering beast mode.” It will be ad-supported, so while users get to listen to whatever Google Play Music is putting on at the time, it will also offer ads, so in some ways it will be like a standard radio station.

The service uses Songza infrastructure, reports note, which Google picked up just under a year ago, and is available currently on the Web. It will follow by the end of the week to Android and iOS, and Google hopes that the free version will encourage paid users to step in and take advantage of the service to the fullest. Considering that Google already has around 815,000 subscribers shelling out the $10 a month to get in as of December alone, this would appear to be a big win.

Image via Shutterstock

That said, it may be a qualified win only. Apple Music is getting into the fray, and already scoring some points with artists for its plans to pay for use of music during a user's 90 day free trial. Spotify, meanwhile, recently announced plans to augment its offerings with video content, and also acquired $526 million in new investment. With reports from as far back as 2014 suggesting that revenue growth in the field would experience “hiccups” through 2019, that makes a particularly dangerous situation for newcomers into the field—at least, for those newcomers that aren't generating around $8 million in revenue a month on current activities and don't have the force of Google behind the operation.

That's a lot of competition, and a lot of different places for users to get roughly the same thing. After all, let's not forget that Google's own YouTube represents an easy way to get just about any song around at no charge thanks to the incredible power of “derivative works”. But with Google offering up some curation and compilation for specific moods, it may have an edge over efforts like Spotify, and that could be all it needs to survive and even thrive in the end.




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]

Contributing TechZone360 Writer

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Related Articles

Tech Innovation in iGaming

By: Contributing Writer    11/29/2023

iGaming is one of the fastest growing industries on the internet. For those who may not be aware, iGaming refers to online casinos, online slots, poke…

Read More

8 Underrated Features of Your Mobile Device You Probably Didn't Know About

By: Contributing Writer    11/21/2023

It is easy to get lost in all the new phone releases when multiple happen yearly. Consequently, most new functions go unnoticed because people do not …

Read More

Navigating the Launch: A Step-by-Step Guide to Bringing Your Product to Market

By: Contributing Writer    11/15/2023

Embarking on the journey to bring a new product into the marketplace is an exhilarating adventure that blends the thrill of innovation with the meticu…

Read More

Running MySQL on AWS: Step by Step

By: Contributing Writer    11/15/2023

MySQL on AWS is the deployment of the MySQL database system on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform. MySQL is one of the most popular open-source …

Read More

4 Easy Responsive Image Techniques

By: Contributing Writer    11/15/2023

Responsive images are a fundamental component in responsive web design. They adapt to the size of the user's screen, delivering the best user experien…

Read More