I Don't Really See The Point Of Google Music.... For Now.

To be fair I have not played with it so this is possibly a little harsh ;-) Google Music was unleashed as a US invite only beta at Google IO yesterday. It allows up to upload up to 20,000 songs to the cloud and then you can play them across any of your devices. OK sounds reasonable but it means that you still have to buy all of the music you want to listen to and you only have access to what you own (No I am not suggesting illegally downloading is an option here ;-)). This is a fairly traditional way of interacting with your music. You buy it, play it and most of the time move on.

Compare this to Spotify. On Spotify there is no need to 'own' a piece of content. It's a streaming service that allows you the same sorts of interaction as you have in iTunes, i.e. creating playlists and building up a library of music you like. Then you can play it across any of your mobile devices through a dedicated native app. To have unlimited access to music, i.e. the number of times you are allowed to play a particular tune, you need a premium account, which currently runs at £10 a month, but that is relatively cheap if you are a traditional music consumer, i.e. purchasing content on iTunes or even the old tech buying of CD's.

Spotify also allows you to download tracks for offline use, if your device is not connected to the internet, in the same way that Google music will let you. I guess the question is, 'Is it necessary to actually own digital content?'. When there is a streaming service is as good as Spotify I would answer, 'No it's not'.

Google music, in my view, would have been great about 3 years ago. In an era of streaming services though, to me at least, it just doesn't make sense. I guess though the next obvious step for Google Music is to offer a streaming music service as well. Since they also announced movie rental services at Google IO as well, I guess music cannot be too far behind! Are there any Google folks knocking on Spotify office doors yet? ;-) Guess now Skype has gone to microsoft there should be a few deal makers free :-))

Oh and as @throg points out, Spotify isn't perfect! There is still loads of stuff, including AC/DC, that is not available on Spotify. That being said Spotify do allow you to ingest the music you own into their service as well. For me this is a stop gap until they do have rights to stream more ;-)

Anyway for now, especially as I don't have an invite to the US only Google Music Beta, I don't think I will be uploading all of my accumulated digital content to the cloud. I guess most of it is already there anyway as I can stream it from Spotify ;-)

Have fun

Cheers

m

P.S. Ha! I guess with the announcement of Google Chromebook this does fit in nicely ;-). Everything in the cloud, playable on every device including your Chromebook. Still I don't see the need to own digital content when it is far simpler to stream it.