Google Launches Free Music Streaming With Ads
Not to be outdone by its industry rival Apple, Google launched free music streaming even before Apple Music makes its debut on June 30. Even before Apple Music, Google was already into music streaming with its paid service Play Music.
According to a report in The Verge, Google will be offering curated playlists likened to those of Songza that are "designed to accompany every moment of your day." This service has long been available on Play Music after Google purchased Songza in late 2014, but it was only offered to paid subscribers.
This new announcement, however, says that they are bringing the service to non-subscribers and casual users. The catch is it will have ads, much like how other free services are offered such as Spotify. Google boasts of thousands of "human-curated playlists" which are "contextually relevant." These playlists behave like radio stations where users get to listen to pre-selected songs.
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Unlike Spotify however, this music service is solely playlist-based and users don't have control over what songs are playing. But Google does not seem to be bothered by this. According to Google Play Music product manager Elias Roman, most people want to have an "effortless" and worry-free listening experience.
"They want the music to be awesome. They want it to be contextually relevant, but they don't want to tweak a lot of knobs," Roman said.
Users who want some level of control over their music, like creating their own playlists and choose their songs will have to get the paid service. Free users are also limited in terms of the number of skips per hour and their use of the service is really more like listening to radio. Google's biggest advantage is that Songza's playlists are considered "pretty excellent."
The free service is currently available to those in the U.S. and the playlists are also available online and via Android (Play Music app). An update for iOS will also be available soon, according to the report.
