In the wake of increased competition in the streaming music arena (cough, cough, APPLE, cough, cough), Google has just added free, ad-supported radio to its free tier of Google Play Music.
This means that free users now have access to the following features:
- The ability to listen on Android, iOS, and the web (nothing new here!)
- Store up to 50,000 of your own tracks (this was recently increased from 20,000)
- Unique recommendations based on your listening history
- Curated radio (this is what’s new) with ads and up to six skips per hour
For $9.99/month, users get unlimited skips and no ads. They also get the ability to download music (on mobile devices) to listen when there’s no internet. Paid users also get YouTube Music Key, which allows for ad-free playback of many music videos on YouTube, background playback of videos, and the ability to download YouTube videos for offline playback.
Well played, Google.
[Google]
