As was expected, Google took the wraps off of its Music service at its I/O event. Again, as expected, the service is US-only for the time being (boo) and is very much in beta.
Called simply Music, the service allows you to access a collection of up to 20,000 of your tracks from the cloud on your Android phone, tablet or on your desktop, via a Flash app. Your tunes are uploaded via Google’s Music Manager desktop program, which is available for Windows and Macs, natch.
Once uploaded, you can then stream tunes from your Android phone, tablet or on any computer with a net connection.
Interestingly, though you can’t directly re-download songs on your phone, the mobile app appears to cache recently played tunes for offline play, kind of like how Google Maps and Spotify’s offline modes work.
The Music app also features something called Instant Mix, which allows you to create playlists based on one song; it automatically picks 25 other tracks based on your listening history and habits. Sounds a lot like Genius on iTunes if you ask us…
Another interesting point to note is that Google says that the service will be free ‘while in beta’, suggesting that there’ll be a cost for this at some point. Pending an agreement with the record labels no doubt.
Head on over to music.google.com/about now to torture yourself.
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