Google Play Music finally hits Australia

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blog Were you there when Apple’s iTunes Music Store first launched in Australia? I was. It was back in October 2005 and I was a journalist at technology news site ZDNet Australia. At the time it was a huge deal for Australian music fans, who had previously been resorting to naughty platforms such as Napster to get their digital music fix on. Well, things have changed a lot in the IT industry, but the iTunes Music Store is still around and kicking. Now it’s got a new competitor: Google. The Android king announced on its Australian blog yesterday:

From today, all Australians can now listen to their favourite artists and download the latest music from Google Play — a digital entertainment destination for Android devices and the web.

Google Play makes it easy for you to buy your favourite songs and albums, and instantly add them to your music library. Our free music locker also means that you can add up to 20,000 songs from your existing music collection to Google Play instantly and listen to them from any computer or Android phone or tablet, even when you’re offline.

On Google Play Music, you can find the latest releases from established Australian artists such as Delta Goodrem, Havana Brown and Lisa Mitchell. For those not signed to a record label, we’re also introducing Google Play artist hub for Australia — a platform for independent artists to sell their music directly to fans. In the artist hub, artists can create a profile, upload their music files, suggest a retail price, and sell their music on Google Play.

With millions of songs to choose from, we hope you’ll find something that makes you want to dance, sing or just relax on your way to work.

Honestly, we can’t work out what took Google this long. It’s not as though offering music through an online store is precisely revolutionary, after all, and the company has had Google Music available through its US play store since November 2011. That’s less time than it took Apple to bring its iTunes Music Store to Australia (the iTMS first launched in April 2003), but it’s still not precisely ideal for Australian fans. Well, at least Google has finally gotten its act together. Now if only it could confirm when its Google Glass units will ship to Australia (if ever).

Image credit: Google

12 COMMENTS

      • @AJ

        I thought about doing that, but ended up going with Google Music before you could buy songs here. Used a VPN to setup an account and uploaded my library. I don’t like the idea of if I stop using an app never having access to my music again. Who knows what will happen in the future? I’d rather use Google Music and know I can download my Music to my Device/Computer anywhere, anytime.

        It’s about time Google brought it in. Made several purchases already today. Same price as Bigpond. No idea how it compares to iTunes (don’t use Apple)- $2.19 for top hits, $1.69 for classics and less for less well known tracks.

    • +1

      Almost certainly due to the music publishers holding out for more money. I’ll be very surprised if the process align with US pricing. Much more likely to have an Australia tax.

  1. Finally!

    While I use Android, I am still locked to iTunes and use Double Twist to migrate the music to my devices. This is not a perfect solution.

    In fact, this may finally mean I can use my Nexus 7, as much of the storage used is mp3 files, so now I can store the music in the cloud (hopefully I can do this without blowing my quota).

  2. We need to look in our own backyard at the like of APRA and the local publishing company arms. They would be fairly threatened by the “upload and sell your independant music” on our services model that Google Play offers.

  3. One interesting “feature” of Google Play is that as it uploads your music from, say, your iTunes library, if it detects that the song is already present in Google Play then it doesn’t upload it, you just get the one that’s already “in the cloud.”

    End result, this morning I listened to a song that I have on a CD at home, but got a slightly different recording, with different lyrics. The opportunities here for having _your_ music censored, editted, substituted or simply deleted have to be kept in mind.

    • @Adrian

      Yes, that’s interesting actually. I downloaded Cee Lo Green’s (excuse the French) “Fuck You”. Originally I bought it on ZDigital on my phone. It got transferred to my computer and I THOUGHT it was uploaded to Google Music. When I listened on my Nexus 7? I got the censored “F You” version…..not happy.

      Was going to send Google an email about it. It isn’t the version I bought and there’s no way to change it as far as I can see. The explicit version is available on Google Music- I just can’t play it because that’s apparently not the version I bought (wrong ID3 tag most likely).

  4. I’ve been using Google Play Music for a long time, right back when they called it Google Music and it was in beta, had to use a proxy to apply for the beta, but it was awesome fun.

    Haven’t really used it much though, i still have all my music on it, and i use it on the odd occasions on my phone, but these days i use mog.com through bigpond on my phone.

  5. What i do absolutely love about Google Play Music though, is the streaming feature.

    Unlike the crap that Apple loves to call their version of the cloud, where you have to download the music from the cloud to your device to play it, and heaven forbid your device be full.

    At least with Google Play Music, it is true streaming.

  6. For those interested in pricing. Picked up a Gordon Goodwin Big Phat Band XXL album something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. on the play store $12.99, Itunes Aus have it at $16.99 Amazon $9.99(but I assume that is US only) don’t have easy access to US play store pricing but it seems in the right ballpark.

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