Hear That Apple? Google Music Now Matches Our Songs For Absolutely Nothing
December 18, 2012
Whatever Google has been drinking this month kindly send some my way. In a month that saw the arrival of YouTube for iPad, YouTube Capture and, of course, Google Maps, comes a big improvement to the Google Music service that will benefit iOS users.
Users no longer have to upload music from their PC or Mac before listening to their songs on another device. Instead, Google Music now uses a matching feature that scans a music collection quickly before rebuilding a user's database in the cloud. The price: absolutely nothing.
By adding the matching feature, Google has effectively undercut the main reason to buy Apple’s $24.99 iTunes Match service. In this case, Google is offering to match up to 20,000 songs for free. This compares to a 25,000 song limit for iTunes Match.
For iOS users, this is terrific news. However, to listen to your music on the iPhone/iPod touch or iPad, you won’t find a native Google Music app in the App Store. Instead, you’ll have to use one of the many third-party apps available. Google Music members can also access their entire collection by visiting music.google.com using mobile Safari.
Amazon’s Cloud Player also provides a song-matching feature, which first arrived in June. In this case, there is an app available for iOS users. Although Amazon allows users to import up to 250 songs for free, it takes a Cloud Player Premium to do more. In this case, $24.99 per year gives you song imports up to 250,000 titles.
For our original look at Google Music, click here.