Having launched in the US back in May, Australians now have access to Google Play Music All Access, Google’s subscription streaming music service. There’s a 30-day free trial on offer; after that, you’ll pay $9.99 a month.
The $9.99 price is identical to the US, but only applies if you sign up before the end of August; after that, it will cost $11.99. As well as listening to Google’s stream of “millions” of songs, you can store 20,000 of your own songs in the cloud for streaming access. The locker feature is available to non-paying customers as well.
Local head Ruuben Van Den Heuvel tells Gizmodo that the delay in setup was due to wanting to ensure that local music relevant to Australians was curated into the service. We’ll translate that as “licensing difficulties.”
Comments
7 responses to “Google Play Music All Access Streaming Service Now Available In Australia”
I just signed up for the trial and am listening at work. Can’t really comment on what it’s like so far, given that I’ve been working in a noisy environment and have been busy all morning.
But a word of warning: You need a valid form of payment (e.g. credit card, but a Google Play gift card may work?) to start the trial (you’re charged nothing initially, then $9.99 afterwards) and you need to cancel the trial manually before 30 days are up, or else you’ll be charged the monthly fee.
I’ve set a calendar reminder so I can do so, if I feel I won’t use the service too often.
This is much better than Spotify simply because it allows you to create and maintain a browsable ‘music library’ made up of both your music and their online catalogue. Even if their catalogue is smaller than that of Spotify, it doesn’t matter because you can supplement it with your music (and have that music anywhere).
I’ve been using this for 2 months (just got charged for my 3rd month) from the US service. It’s fantastic to be able to find music either that I want or randomly using the various radio features and easily drop them into a playlist that auto syncs to my mobile device for listening offline.
I’m interested to know if I’ll be able to access the Australian music through the same service (since from Google’s perspective I think I’m an American customer).
In any case; 2 months behind the US is pretty quick for something like this; have any other countries got All Access yet?
would prefer a desktop client like that of spotify, I keep pressing my play/pause button on the keyboard which instead of pausing google music, it opens spotify.
Sadly these services “license” content from artists on terms indistinguishable from piracy. Copyright law doesn’t really give artists the option to opt out. Many pople just pirate muic these days. The people who don’t want to break the law will be drawn to these “legal” services, and the artist revenue that still exists will collapse.
I’m not sure what your point is here – those who wanted a legal service, now have that option and do not have to pirate, or miss out.
If the streaming service is not paying enough in royalties to the artist (ala Spotify), that is not the fault of the consumer, and the artist has recourse via legal options against the streaming provider – unless of course they signed a crappy agreement in the first place.
I’m sorry, but we’ve had big name artists wagging their fingers at us for years, at the encouragement of the recording industry, telling us all not to pirate.
Now there are legal alternatives, and we see them complaining that they’re not getting enough money.
I suspect they are starting to see who the proper villain is, and it’s not the consumer.
Are the 18 million songs listed actually available to Australia, or is it the usual subset of music, because so much stuff isn’t licensed for online sale here irrespective of whether it’s Play, Spotify, iTunes or whatever?