Google has been offering a subscription based music service, Google Play Music, for some time. Now the search giant has decided to more aggressively pursue users by leveraging its advertising network muscle to create a free version of Google Play Music.
"At any moment in your day, Google Play Music has whatever you need music for—from working, to working out, to working it on the dance floor—and gives you curated radio stations to make whatever you're doing better," claims the official Android blog. Google bought in the Songza technology and 'experts' last year and everyone in the US can listen to these well regarded playlists via the web, on their Android device and via iOS thanks to an update coming shortly. As your free listening will be playlist based, the service appears to be more like a personal radio station than the likes of Spotify.
All of the artists you can currently stream tracks from on the subscription based Google Play Music will have their tracks available within the ad-supported playlist-based service. This brings 30 million songs to your ears. With this and with the paid service you can store and play up to 50,000 songs from your own collection.
Google hopes that the ad-supported taster will entice users to upgrade to the paid-subscription model ($9.99 per month). It says that for the monthly fee you will gain the ability to "play without ads, take your music offline, create your own playlists, and listen to any of the 30 million songs in our library on any device and as much as you'd like." Furthermore subscribers get ad-free, offline and background features for music videos on YouTube.
The free, ad-supported version of Google Play Music is available in the US right now starting with the web based version and coming to Android and iOS via software updates later in the week.
