New Google Play Music All Access subscription service
thenextweb.com
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Secondly- why would I use this over a specialist like Spotify or Rdio? I know why Google want me to, but as of right now I don't see the benefits from switching to a specialist provider that is dedicated to music to a generalist company that has a passing interest in the area.
com.Google.Play.Music.AllAccess
As to why you'd use it, I'm hoping they are going to compete by offering functionality (the demoed playlist lookahead and the swipe to ignore feature looks pretty cool) and perhaps ramping up features faster than their competitors.
But another goal is to just have a service that attacks their competitor's strengths (mainly Apple, also Amazon). If streaming is popular, music purchases are not and music stores suffer = Google starves it's competition.
There are so many problems in the world that Google could solve with it's resources and can turn into billion dollar markets. They are pretty much becoming MSFT rather than AAPL in doing so.
The problem is online music is fraught with litigation challenges. Of course, only GOOG or any other tech giant could fight them off with their resources. But at the end of the day, will it really lead to multi-billion dollars in returns?
It's inevitable when you get into the platform business. This is a check mark for comparison charts, nothing more.
Money. The other things you listed aren't money makers.
Yet. It's nice to see Google focus on a mix of cash cows, short-term easy risks and longer-term speculative ventures.
This gave me an option to sign up. I can play music through the web, but there's no update to the phone app yet.
Now, where's the Netflix competitor? That should've arrived a long time ago, too. And what about a books subscription service? Are they still serious enough about Google Books to do that?
I don't know, it's just surprising to me that an "innovative" company like Google chooses to replicate decade old business models with their ever so slight take on it, instead of trying to come up with their own disruptive business models. They can't just enter in a market 5-10 years later with marginal improvements and expect to beat the leaders just because they are "big".
Google has bet everything on social and are creating these satellite services to fuel G+ usage and adoption. You won't see anything revolutionary coming out of GOOG for a while.
I currently use Spotify and there is no way I'll be switching to a Google product. In fact I'm trying to reduce my dependence on Google products.
It's not perfect, but this makes me a little bit curious about Android again, maybe in 2 years I'll jump ship again but Microsoft has a pretty solid offering at this point and a sizable lead in the subscription music market.
Music licensing is a difficult and likely very expensive thing. It's reasonable to assume they're launching US-only and building revenue first, then tackling worldwide as they are able.
I know that licensing is difficult and takes time but Google has plenty of money. They don't need to build revenue in one country before they can launch in another. They need to launch everywhere to get uptake on this, especially when the market is so competitive.
any details around the locker component; namely storage size?
I'm working in Ireland right now trying to use my US account. Perhaps they don't have an out of country error?
Its cool because you can experiment all you want with new music and not run up huge bills. Its okay to get into music again.