Getting A Google Home? Here’s Why You Should Ditch Spotify For Google Play Music

Getting A Google Home? Here’s Why You Should Ditch Spotify For Google Play Music

Last week, Google announced a slew of new products, from a pair of Google Home voice assistant variants to the new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones. Those new voice assistants, such as the $79 Google Home Mini and the $US399 ($514) Google Home Max, make music playback throughout the home simple — so you’re going to want to hook up to a music streaming service. Google Play wants to be the streaming service of choice for all Google devices. With added features designed to entice Google Home, Chromecast and Android users, here’s why it’s worth your consideration over other services such as Spotify.

Spotify’s pretty platform-agnostic, but the service doesn’t benefit from the integration found in pairings such as iOS and Apple Music, or Android and Google Play Music. Sure, it works on voice assistants such as Google Home and Amazon Echo, and other connected speakers from companies such as Sonos. It also plays nicer with Android devices than a service like Apple Music. But Google’s integration with its own products and services brings with it even more convenience for the same $11.99 monthly price as Spotify’s Premium service.

Google Play Store Integration is Convenient

In addition to managing both your streaming and personal music collection, Google Play Music makes it easy to purchase and consume other forms of media you can enjoy on your devices, such as movies, podcasts and e-books. Spotify only has videos related to its own original content, content you’re probably not actively looking for (unless you’re into Green Day documentaries).

Get YouTube Red for Free

Google Play Music bundles YouTube Red with its subscription, making it a great option for video junkies who hate commercials. YouTube Red also makes your Google Play Music service more functional. If you’re listening to a song with an accompanying music video, you can choose the video option and watch it sans interruption. Since you can effortlessly watch whatever video (including YouTube Red Originals) you’d like, it makes the subscription perfect for Chromecast users as well.

Google Play Music Stores More Imported Songs

Where Google Play Music shines is in offline playback. While Spotify lets you store songs offline, you can only import over 10,000 songs. With Google Play, you can listen to up to 50,000 of your own songs. As someone with an iTunes library full of weird video game soundtracks and obscure jazz albums, I like the idea of being able to access my personal library of music that’s otherwise unavailable online.

Google Play Music also seems to carry a few more songs than Spotify, according to their advertising. You don’t need to worry much about albums exclusive to either service, as Spotify said it was moving away from the tactic deemed harmful to the music industry. Spotify claims a library of “over 30 million songs”, while Google Play Music says its catalogue includes “over 40 million” tracks to choose from. Google Play Music also has a few more podcasts in its catalogue compared to Spotify (two of my favourite podcasts were unavailable on Spotify).

There’s no reason you shouldn’t at least look into switching music services, especially if your new choice lets you bring your favourite songs from back in the day. Whether or not you’ll like the bright visual stylings of Google Play Music is based on your personal preference, but the benefits seemingly outweigh the learning curve and initial growing pains associated with switching when compared to the next best thing.


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