Move over, Spotify. Tech giant Google showed off its new subscription radio service, Google Play Music All Access, at its developers conference today. According to an Associated Press report, the service "blends songs users have already uploaded to their online libraries with millions of other tracks" and costs about $10 a month ($8 for early adopters) (Liedtke, 2013, para. 1).
Yay?
OK, confession time: While Google product announcements usually get my geeky little heart a-thumpin', this time, I'm just not feeling it. I've never been big on subscription-based music; I still prefer to buy one or two $5 MP3 albums from Amazon.com every now and then and sync them to my iPod. My husband says it's because he and I are digital packrats.
That's not to say that I don't ever stream any music or use cloud services. I love the free version of Google Music, and my entire digital audio collection is also stored in the cloud. Maybe I'm just a cheapskate?
At any rate, don't let my weird hangups about subscribing to ... well, anything ... stop you from checking out Google's latest offering. There's even a nifty little video for it, so it has to be cool, right?
Figure 1. This video, retrieved from http://youtu.be/ZnmxmtwbhE0, shows off some of the features of Google's new streaming radio service (Google Play, 2013).
References
Google Play. (2013, May 15). Google Play: Tonight [video file]. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/ZnmxmtwbhE0
Liedtke, M. (2013, May 15). Google's music plan part of fresh wave of upgrades. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Retrieved from http://www.ajc.com/ap/ap/entertainment/google-unveils-10-a-month-all-access-music-plan/nXrxh/
I also use several sites to download cheap MP3 albums. Other than that, Pandora can be great when hanging out at the house. I still don't mind the free version with limited commercials. The new Google Play monthly subscription thing reminds me of the old-school subscription service that would mail CDs to your home.
ReplyDeleteHahaha, I forgot all about those CD clubs! Blast from the past!
DeleteBut yeah, the only online radio service I've ever used is last.fm, and that's only for the stats. I love seeing how many times I've played certain songs -- plus, it counts plays from my iPod, iTunes, Google Music, and everywhere else I have the "scrobbler" installed. But I don't really use it for the radio stations -- just stats and recommendations.