Google Play Offers iTunes Match Feature for Free

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Posted December 18, 2012 at 8:40pm by Shalom Levytam

Google has announced an iTunes Match like feature for Google Play at no cost to users.

Traveling this season and want to make sure your music goes with you? Add up to 20,000 songs from your music collection to Google Play and stream it to your Android devices and your computer, anywhere you go.

Our new music matching feature gets your songs into your online music library on Google Play much faster. We’ll scan your collection and quickly rebuild it in the cloud - all for free. And we’ll stream your music back to you at up to 320 kbps.

This feature is live today for those in the US. It was launched in Europe last month. Apple charges $24.99/year for the service.

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GoogieHowsThatWork - December 20, 2012 at 1:18pm

Wait, hold up... you still have to UPLOAD the audio files entirely?! Where's the "match" part? If I'm uploading them anyway... the only part being saved any resources or trouble is Google, in saving server space. It'd take me months to upload my audio... No thanks, I'll just copy the damn things to local storage for that trouble...

GoogieHowsThatWork - December 20, 2012 at 1:27pm

From Forbes.com: Music junkies in the United States just received an early holiday gift from Google in the form of a music matching feature, and free 320kbps cloud streaming from Google Music’s online locker. Google Music is a free service that allows users to upload a maximum of 20,000 songs to an online storage locker accessible via the web and Android devices. The software itself leaves a small footprint and runs in the background, automatically uploading new tracks from your library. ***The downside of the service is that for digital music packrats (self included), the initial upload process can literally take weeks*** (my personal music collection clocks in at 52GB). ... and in my test here, it uploaded all the albums that I added to test. Unimpressed. Is this true? If it is, no wonder it's free... and all the more reason why this is NOT iTunes Match. 1- You can't re-download "matched" aka "uploaded" songs, 2- There's no fingerprinting even done-- at least locally, which is the entire point of fingerprinting and matching audio... to reduce the need to upload your massive music collection and to reduce their burden on the storage end. The albums that I added were mainstream, no some underground unknown bands. Anybody wanna clear this up?

Jon - December 20, 2012 at 3:19pm

Do you have a dial-up connection for your upload (you say it may take you weeks?)......and yes you can re-download....

Big B - December 20, 2012 at 5:10am

I think Josh already made the answer pretty clear and hit it spot on- you're not paying for music you already have paid for (in a utopian world, where every audio file has been "paid for", not sure about the real world). What you're paying for is 1- bandwidth so you can delete/re-download your audio files to any of your devices, arbitrarily; 2- the server space used by any of your audio files that don't match up to iTunes for whatever reason (live bootlegs, etc). Also, as he mentioned, while Google doesn't charge you directly, they are making money off of you, believe me. No for-profit business is altruistic. Google gives away nearly everything it offers for free. All of their major cornerstone products, at least like Gmail and Google Docs/Drive, Picasa, whatever current incarnation of their omni-failing attempt at a social networking endeavor is gasping for breath as this is being read... (sad but true). Yet despite all this free stuff, they're one of the hugest-grossing companies in existence today. How is that possible? Simple- nothing is truly "free". So Apple is just charging you, then there's no worry of advertising revenue, having to sell your info, implicitly or explicitly; directly or indirectly. And finally, as said- is $25 a YEAR really a "ripoff" or an egregious amount for such a service? No way. Yeah it'd be nice if it worked better, but we're so used to getting everything free these days, we've gotten spoiled. Whenever anyone asks a nominal fee, especially for a SERVICE, we're quick to raise hell. I'm not saying iTunes Match is rad; I'm just saying it's not the insanely overpriced scam that everyone seems to make it out to be. "See, your problem is you only wanna buy free apps." ;) I take it that "inside joke" won't be wasted on the viewers of this site (or at least I hope not)! All said and done, if you think it's such a bad deal, simply don't pay for it/use it. But at the same time don't go on a crusade against it as totally worthless and has no merit. Maybe not to you, but to a niche audience, I'm sure it's of great utility. Today's words: "object perspective" & "reality".

jay - December 19, 2012 at 5:23pm

I have both iTunes Match and Google Play. I prefer Play since you can stream. I hate having to delete the tracks from the phone or iPad with Match. Both have their pluses and minuses as well. what I'd like to know is why is this now being announced? I've been using Google Play since September. maybe a relaunch?

Guest - December 19, 2012 at 5:37am

What next they r going to copy from Apple?

bunam - December 19, 2012 at 12:07am

you probably lose your soul when sign in a google service, i think they sail the stats to the majors ;)

Timmy - December 18, 2012 at 9:55pm

i have a feeling Apple will continue to charge for iTunes Match, but instead raise the song limit from 20,000 to 40,000 or something.

JamesHoyland23 - December 18, 2012 at 8:58pm

iTunes Match is a complete an utter rip off you have to pay and subscribe

Darryn - December 18, 2012 at 9:20pm

Exactly. Since you already own all of the music to start with...

Josh - December 19, 2012 at 1:46am

iTunes Match isn't a rip off. You are paying to use a service, which in this case you are paying to use server space. That's not free. Google makes all of their money through advertising, Apple makes it directly from the customer. $25 a year is cheap. I don't see how it's a rip off. If you can't afford about $2 a month, then why do you own Apple products in the first place. I think this is great for Apple though. More competition means Apple has to step it up now.

Copperhead - December 19, 2012 at 8:21am

It's a complete rip off, why on gods earth would I pay again for music I purchased already. To make Apple even more billionaires ? Remember that yes your music is on a server but you will no longer have intellectual property of what you purchase. So basically you buy your music and it sits on a cloud and you rent to hear your own music even though you own it?? Makes no damn sense. - now Google shows the world how its properly done. Thank you Google!!! I will always support Google on what they do because for them it's really about the consumer, not trying to pocket billions by dipping in people's pockets for no reason. Apple really needs to take a lesson from Google. - Google says its all about living life the fun way,...

Copperhead - December 19, 2012 at 8:24am

My New Modo For GOOGLE ( live life the fun way, Go Play ).....

Ken - December 18, 2012 at 8:54pm

Damn I have 20,001 songs...

McGiord - December 18, 2012 at 8:51pm

Good news, now Apple to match this...

CASEACE79 - December 18, 2012 at 9:00pm

I agree. Love competition. Consumers are the ones that end up winning.