Google’s recently announced Music Beta should be a quick and easy way to stream music on the go when it makes it’s way over to UK Android phones. However, another exciting service has beaten it to the punch – Napster for Android has finally been released in this country. How do the two services match up?
Structure
Napster has turned itself from peer-to-peer music industry-botherer to subscription-based streaming service over the space of a decade or so. It now runs very much like Spotify, and this new Android app allows you to stream unlimited music (from a choice of 13 million tracks) to your mobile in much the same way. You don’t own this music, but you do have the right to play it as many times as you like while your subscription is active.
By contrast, Google Music Beta on your Android will only allow you to stream the music you’ve bought from other sources, and then ‘only’ 20,000 tracks. The idea is to upload your CDs and MP3s to the cloud, which will allow you to then access them from any computer or Android device over Wi-Fi or 3G.
Costs
Music Beta from Google is free to our US cousins at present, but it’s highly unlikely to stay that way. The clue is in the ‘Beta’ tag – in other words Google is using early subscribers (by invitation only) to test the functionality of the application while it tweaks and adds to it. It won’t charge for this mutually beneficial arrangement right now, but by the time the service loses its Beta tag it almost certainly will.
Napster’s more far-reaching functionality sets you back £10 a month, which seems to be just about the going rate for such services (it’s the same as Spotify, for example). There’s a seven day free trial, which lets you try out the full feature-set, and you can even get a taster of streaming music without signing up.
Extras
Napster goes beyond simply offering the music – it also provides recommendations based on editorial advice and billboard charts. It also shows you new releases, and provides Last.fm-style custom radio stations based on genre.
By contrast, Google Music Beta is a bare-bones offering that offers no such recommendations. It’s understandable, though, given that Google doesn’t actually provide the music – it simply hosts it. Still, a little personality and focus wouldn’t go amiss in such a competitive market.
Offline modes
Both services offer a limited offline facility, which helps you out when no internet connection is available. Napster caches the last 100 tracks you played, which makes them available to play regardless of connection.
Google Music Beta also caches your recently played tracks, though it’s unclear how many at this stage. You can also opt to “pin” tracks to your device, which effectively downloads them over a period of time, so that you can keep your favourite tracks and albums to hand at all times.
Music to our ears
Ultimately, the two services are in very different states and are setting out to do slightly different things. Google’s Music Beta is aimed at making the music that you already own more accessible, more mobile and more secure.
Meanwhile Napster offers the established “unlimited music” service, where you can listen to anything you want (within reason – those with less mainstream tastes will doubtless be disappointed from time to time), but you’ll never actually own any of it.
We can see Google eventually adding the kind of music buying and/or subscription functionality that will really cause discord with Napster. Until then, though, the two services appear to be in almost perfect harmony.
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