Google Pulled The Trigger, Google Music Service Is Here.

"Google announced its subscription streaming service, Google Play Music All Access (wow that’s a mouthful), at Google I/O Wednesday. It’s all about harnessing the power of Google to provide you with stellar music recommendations, on your phone, tablet, or on the web. "

*sigh* I did it again, source article:http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/google-play-music-all-access/

https://play.google.com/music/

You of course need a Google account.

 

Interesting... thanks Mman79.

 

Quite welcome. I don't have a Google account at the moment so I haven't dug around in there. I wish they'd not stick a login screen in front of it like some guy behind a door asking for a password. It would be nice to at least be able to take a tour. Reviews will start hitting the web in the next day or so though. MOG is in limbo, with support questions basically going unanswered, and Spotify looks to have abandoned its app development (or doesn't care), so this is a good time for Google to step up.

 

Will be interesting to see how many U.S. citizens that will give it a go, and what they think about it.

 

Reviews are starting to pop up:

http://lifehacker.com/google-music-all-access-should-it-be-your-new-streamin-506977460

http://gizmodo.com/google-play-music-all-access-hands-on-all-you-want-mi-506844196

Bottom line it seems is that if you crave social activity with your music, it's probably best to stay with whomever you already have. Other than that, not bad reviews thus far.

 

A quick little "tour" page I managed to finally hunt down:

https://play.google.com/about/music/

 

Would it be fair to say this is a kind of google answer to spotify.?

 

It certainly is, and Google is in a great position to pull it off. Right off the bat they have all 3 major labels on board and they don't have to worry so much about profits like Spotify, Rdio and others do. I'm going to test it myself here soon. Spotify has some worrying to do now, MOG, Rdio, these guys are sweating now.

 

Thank you for the link mman.
Google tries to get into everything nowadays.Good luck to them.

 

MOG? I see that you have mentioned MOG in similar threads, so I now need to ask what is MOG?

Google is your friend, yes sure, but other readers may like to know too.

 

MOG is a music service that was bought by Beats, a headphones company started by Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre:https://mog.com/. It soon will become another service entirely, code-named for now "Daisy", with Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor helping to oversee it. The most recent news has it moving away from on-demand, all-you-can-eat music like Spotify to a more playlist-based radio service with a half-algorithm, half-curated music suggestions.

Right now it's a bit "abandoned" as far as support goes, likely because the new service is supposed to arrive in June or a little later. No pricing changes have been announced yet, and details about how the service will work and the quality and quantity of music is still a little sparse. It's being held very close to the chest.

 

I see, thanks for the details, I've heard of Dr. Dre before. Not a fan of the Beats headphones though.

I am starting to wonder how many of these Music and/or TV streaming services that will survive, new ones start up, while others quit. Time will tell.....but this industry is changing on a daily basis now.

 

Not many audiophiles or serious listeners are fans of the headphones. It's mostly a teen thing like Skull headphones were, and the headphones are only decent for bass-heavy music. Even then you have to be careful. I've seen enough pairs get blown out by Dubstep.

Stockholders are a big question mark in determining how long these services survive. How long can a single service go by breaking even or staying in the red? How patient are these stockholders? Also, Google tied the music service in with its books, apps and movies. Only iTunes is able to compete with that at the moment. Rdio has Vdio, but Vdio exists solely to bring more cash flow into Rdio, and I don't think there is any data yet to see how well it's helping them.

If I had a crystal ball, this is what I would see for the next 5 years at least:

1. Pandora finally succumbing to sky-high licensing rates that their 36 dollar a year fees can't even begin to cover, and dying within 2 years tops.

2. Slacker following just before or slightly after Pandora in the graveyard.

3. Grooveshark dying within the next year due to its still unresolved legal issues.

4. Free services like Accuradio, Songza and 8Tracks losing steam and some fading away in the next 2-3 years.

5. Rdio being gone within 2 years.

6. Spotify at serious risk of failing within 3-4 years, if not sooner.

7. iTunes making a comeback as far as purchasing, but its streaming service either not coming to pass or never getting very far off the ground before crashing back down to Earth.

8. Google Music having a very fast rise in subscriptions over the next 6 months, but slowing down afterward (that's sort of an obvious "vision" to make, but whatever) and keeping itself at a steady pace for at least the 5 year period. Again, Google can afford to take risks and do things others, not even Apple cannot.

9. Deezer arriving in the U.S this year-early 2014 and falling on its face because of too many players on the field. I truly have no faith it will survive here.

10. Streaming not lasting much further into the future past the 5 year mark. There is simply no money to be in 10 dollar a month subscriptions, not for music, not for movies, not for any media. You have to have far more than 6 million subscribers (current Spotify numbers) paying 10 dollars a month to stay afloat. That's 60 million dollars for licensing agreements, overhead costs, you name it.

 

Don't bother with this service unless you're willing to wait and hope Google will actually do anything to help you. I tried to sign up, gave them my phone number for their stupid "verification" (yes they're still forcing that), clicked the email verification link and was told my account was disabled...before the f'ing thing was even active. I try to send a support request and "there was a problem submitting your form" 5 times in a row and still never took. So now Google has my phone number, my non-Gmail email address, and I'm left out in the cold without a pot to ~ Snipped as per TOS ~ in. I have to wonder if not signing up for their crappy Gmail and not wanting my information to be used in their equally crappy and abandoned Google +1 is against their TOS. If they don't want people to opt out of crap, don't put check boxes there.

Thank God I didn't get far enough in to give them my credit card information before they unceremoniously booted me.

 

Yes yes, I know, JR, I was miffed Anyway, just an update that I managed to finally get some help and am now trying the service out. It's not bad, guys. The sound quality is good, radio is good, the library might come up short, depending on what you like to hear. But, generally if an artist doesn't want to be streamed, you're not going to find them anywhere. The web-based UI is very clean, responsive and, unlike Spotify, you can remove things you don't want from your queues, playlists, etc. Is it 100 times better than Spotify or the others? Musically, no, it's about the same I'd say. But Google has a far better chance of surviving the inevitable "cleansing" I see coming fro streaming in general.

I've got 30 days for free (minus 56 cents worth of tax? That was weird to see, lol), so we'll see how it goes.