Can Google Give Spotify the Smackdown?
Google has set its sights on releasing a music service to take on popular options such as Spotify, Pandora and Rhapsody. Their recently announced streaming music service — Google Play All Access — is poised to make quite a splash in the market.
What is It?
Google Play All Access has launched. In a hypebot.com interview with Paul Joyce, product manager of Google Play Music, said the approach is to play to Google’s strengths — the cloud infrastructure: cloud computing, streaming and storage. It draws upon the massive music library that Google has assembled and adds to individual users’ collections. The combined collections are uploaded to Google Play, which gives Google even more audio data to use for their service.
A few other standout features include “Listen Now,” which works similar to Pandora in picking out new songs that are inline with the listener’s music interests. It also deletes songs that you don’t want to and it’s both web-based and mobile-based, according to CNN.
Google’s ISP Takeover
This is hardly the first time Google has broken into an existing market in a big way. Google Fiber, the high-speed Internet and television service, has created a stir in the Internet service provider industry. In many areas of the country, ISPs had previously had virtual monopolies on services and weren’t exactly rushing to incorporate new technology.
A basic Internet package runs about $35 per month, notes cleartvbundle.com. But it doesn’t quite compare to where Google Fiber is going. ISPs and cable companies in the three cities that Google Fiber is rolling out in, Kansas City, Provo and Austin are scrambling to stay competitive considering Google offers a free Internet option as well at a price close to many ISPs standard plans.
Google Play All Access Versus Spotify
So the real question is, how well does Google Play All Access stand up against Spotify, which is one of the leaders in the streaming music market? Google made sure to have an application available for Android users, but it did not create one specifically for the iOS market. However, according to Wired, a third party developer is making it available through iOS with the gMusic app.
Spotify wins out in the pricing, since you don’t actually have to pay anything to use the basic service on computers. Google is $9.99 per month, which matches Spotify for mobile access. Spotify’s radio option falls short compared to Google’s, due to the fact that you can alter the Google Listen Now list to exclude songs you don’t want.
Google also looks better than Spotify with a clean UI. Features such as Drive based storage of 20,000 songs and MP3 incorporation into lists helps to consolidate music collections. Spotify wins out with its desktop client, as Google only has a browser based option.
It certainly can’t hurt to try both. Each offer a one month free trial.
Written by Sean Norris for Kelli Richards, CEO of the All Access Group, LLC
Sean Norris
A tweeting fiend and music lover, Sean goes to concerts and tweets up-to-date reports on the hour, every hour.
