Google Play Music is a platform for streaming music and podcasts effectively. It is operated by Google and is one of the Google Play applications (mostly on Android devices).
Google announced the creation of Google Play Music at about May 2020 but was made available for use in November 2011.
There are two types of accounts on the platform. They are:
- The Standard Account
- The Premium Account
The Standard Account
The Standard account allows a user to upload about 50,000 songs from their phone’s personal library and is attracts no cost.
When you add or download a new song into your phone’s library, Google Play Music updates your library so you can get the song in the exact quality that it is on your phone.
It supports files in the following formats: MP3, WMA, ALAC, FLAC, and Ogg. The Standard Account also allows a user curate playlists for himself to enjoy songs for different times and moods.
This account has ad pop-ups and can disrupt your music while you are listening (as this is an avenue for them to make revenue).
The Premium Account
The Premium account requires a paid subscription that gives you access to stream songs of different variety and also allows access to the paid version of YouTube Music.
You can pay for songs too on the Premium account (songs that are only available when paid for) and download songs for offline play. Users receive access to over 40 million songs and can download songs for offline play.
The first thirty days for Premium subscribers are free, but you have to input your card details to access the free thirty days. This account also disables ads completely on the application.
Google Play Music is available in over 63 countries. They also have a plan called Family Plan, but it is restricted to a few countries like the United States, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, etc.
Google Play Music works hand-in-hand with Google Assistant to give you a better experience with music on your device. Google Play Music can be used across different devices with just your login details as the requirement.
It can be used on your smartphone and on your personal computer at the same time. The small catch there is, listening is limited to just one device at a time.
Anyway, in June 2018, Google announced that Google Play Music would metamorphose into YouTube Music. All their subscribers will have to migrate there with the same account so paid subscribers will not lose their subscriptions and every other benefit they had on the application.
It has been slowly transferring data for some time, and music streaming has trickled down for a bit. It is still available as a major music player for Android phones, but no songs can be downloaded for offline listening anymore.
According to Google, the plan is to shut it down by December 2020, that is, complete deletion of data and disabling the application on every user’s phone across 63 countries.
