[the-facts-machine] Jam out for free on Google Play Music
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <the-facts-machine@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2015 17:09:27 -0400
BlankI haven't tried this yet, I don't know if the release for IOS has been
posted yet. But, it should be soon.
Jam out for free on Google Play Music By Jessica Guynn, USATODAY
Google will offer a free, ad-supported version of Google Play Music two years
after the debut of its paid subscription service. The move comes as the
streaming wars intensify with the imminent launch of Apple Music and the
continued growth of Spotify. The ad-supported version of Google Play Music is
launching first in the U.S. It will be available on the Web on Tuesday and on
Android and iOS devices later this week. "We want to attract even more users,
give them a taste of the service and hope they subscribe over time," said
Zahavah Levine, vice president of partnerships for Google Play. Radio stations
on the service are curated by music experts -- including staffers from Songza
-- so users can browse stations by genre, mood, decade or activity, or by
artist, song or album. The already existing paid subscription gives consumers
access to other features such as skipping ads, listening to music offline,
creating playlists and perusing the library of 30 million songs. Subscribers
also get early access to YouTube's new subscription service, which Google
currently is testing. That lets viewers skip ads while watching millions of
videos for a monthly fee. Levine declined to say how many subscribers Google
Play Music has. MIDiA Research analyst Mark Mulligan said Google is a "minor
player" in the streaming market. Google wants to be on every screen and on
every device so online advertisers can target consumers wherever they are and
no matter what they are doing. With more consumers streaming music on
smartphones and tablets, Google is looking to keep people hooked on Google
services and Android mobile devices. "Free is what Google does best -- they
know how to build user engagement around free and monetize it with advertising
better than anyone else," Mulligan said. The major music labels have complained
that easy access to free music has kept people from paying for music streaming.
So far, music aficionados, not mainstream consumers, are the ones paying for
subscriptions, said Jan Dawson, chief analyst for Jackdaw Research. The vast
majority of Spotify users are not paid subscribers. Spotify offers a free
ad-supported service as well as paid subscriptions. "Spotify numbers show it's
a small subset of users who feel this is something worth paying for," Dawson
said. YouTube, owned by Google, is the world's most popular streaming
destination. Google's main focus remains advertising "because it helps them
drive user engagement, which generates more data and thus more ad dollars,"
Mulligan said. "I think Google will do a much better job of enticing passive
music fans to the free offering than it will converting them to paid," he said.
The music industry is hoping that Apple's new service, Apple Music, set to
launch on June 30, will entice hundreds of millions of iTunes customers to
embrace the subscription model on the same devices on which they already
download and listen to music. Apple, Google, Spotify and other players are in a
race to capture the streaming market as the music industry makes the transition
to consumption from ownership. Revenue from streaming music services jumped 29%
to $1.87 billion in 2014, accounting for 27% of total industry revenues,
according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Revenue from
digital downloads fell 8.7% to $2.58 billion in 2014. Spotify has a big lead,
having doubled its paying subscribers to 20 million over the past year.
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