Google Bolsters Music Beta With New Magnifier Blog
by Craig Getting on August 19, 2011 10:03 AM EST- Posted in
- Cloud Computing
Google Music Beta, the search giant’s music streaming service, launched earlier this summer to tepid reviews before drifting into the background after the much-ballyhooed release of Spotify in the United States. While garnering praise for its audio quality and Android connectivity, it was knocked for lacking an iOS app and, perhaps more importantly, the ability to purchase music.
While there’s still no music store, Google’s hoping to renew your interest in Google Music with Magnifier, a new music discovery site curated by the Google Music team. Not only does Magnifier offer daily song recommendations, it can download those tracks for free into your Google Music account.
Like most of Google Music, Magnifier’s smooth. It took just a few seconds for the song to appear in my library and then just a handful more for the song to start playing. While Magnifier hasn’t been around long enough for me to know if my tastes match up with those of its editors, I can see myself checking back regularly based solely on the ease of use.
If Google could only secure the rights to actually sell music, a stream of interesting free music coupled with Google’s generous cloud storage (roughly 20,000 songs for free compared to $20 for 10GB on Apple’s iCloud service) could put Google Music on equal footing with iTunes and Amazon’s Digital Marketplace.
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seamonkey79 - Sunday, August 21, 2011 - link
Probably not, they know where your IP is located and because of licensing likely cannot let you play music... now if you could proxy your phone to a US location, possibly :-)tayb - Sunday, August 21, 2011 - link
I've been using it for a few months now on my Droid X and at first I was very impressed with the service but after the novelty wore off. Streaming all of my music killed battery life and whenever there was poor service I had no music at all. Eventually I had most of my music moved directly back onto my phone and I wasn't using the service very often. I also had the unfortunate problem of about 180 songs not being uploaded because they included DRM.After seeing what Apple is going to be offering with the iCloud I think Google definitely needs to step up their game and it needs to remain free, forever.