After many weeks of waiting, Google Play Music is now available for free. Google's cloud music storage service is inevitably compared to iTunes Match, offered by Apple. Both services offer practically the same thing, although Google's is free, with a Premium service (€ 9,99 / month) and Apple's obligatorily makes you go through the box (€ 24,99 / year). What do both services offer? What are the differences between the two? ¿Compensates to pay for iTunes Match when Google Play Music offers "the same"? Let's take a look at both services by analyzing their main features. Today we will talk about its main function: storing music in the cloud.
Google Play Music: up to 20.000 songs totally free
Google offers its cloud music storage service split in two: the storage itself is free, up to 20.000 songs that you can easily upload to the cloud, with no size limit, but for the radio service you will have to pay. The music that you buy directly from Google Play does not count towards the limit, and only those that Google cannot find in its extensive catalog are actually uploaded. Google has made it very easy for Apple users, since you can import your music library directly from iTunes, downloading a simple application that only works for that: uploading and downloading music from Google Play Music. It does not have a player, a pity, although the browser you use will allow you to play all the music directly.
iTunes Match: a single package for € 24,99 per year
Apple for its part offers a single package for € 24,99 per year. Take it or leave it, there are no options in between. Paying this you will have available the storage in the nine of up to 25.000 songs, without counting those that you buy directly from the iTunes store, and the streaming radio service without advertising and being able to pass songs without limit (not yet available in Spain). As before, only those songs that Apple does not identify in its vast catalog will actually be uploaded to its servers, those that it does identify will not have to be uploaded, they will appear directly in your library. In addition, those that you identify you will have in AAC format, without DRM and in 256Kbps quality, whatever the quality of your original file. Uploading the music and playing it is done from the iTunes application itself, which can be an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on your taste. I personally prefer it that way, I don't like using web browsers to listen to music.
Two services with very similar results
Once your music library is uploaded to Google Play Music or iTunes Match, the results are very similar. Both services have left me some songs without identifying correctly, despite the fact that they were perfectly labeled. It is curious that they have not coincided on the unidentified songs. The upload time of my library, with just over 1000 songs has been very similar in both cases, perhaps somewhat slower Google Play Music, but not very significant.
We still have to analyze the services of streaming radio and mobile apps available to listen to our music, but that will be in two other new articles in the coming days.
More information - Google Play Music comes to the AppStore
I prefer spotofy