Google has beaten its cloud rivals to the music punch by allowing users to store all their tunes digitally…and for free.
The new Google Play Music service, which comes to Europe on 13 November, will feature a Scan and Match option that will scan your library and save it to the cloud – making them all accessible from any Google device.
While the likes of Amazon and Apple will charge you £21.99 a year (or only let you upload 250 songs for free) Google Play Music will allow up to 20,000 songs stored online, and can be played back on any internet-connected device at up to 320Kbps quality.
Play, collaborate and listen
The new Google Play Music platform will allow users in Europe to purchase and download music for the first time, and will also enable sharing to your friends via Google Plus.
These 'social recommendations' will allow you to share the song with unlimited people and they'll be able to listen to it once before being given the option to buy it, too.
And the big news for unsigned artists is they'll also be able to get their wares up on Google Play Music, as well - joining the other big names like iTunes and Amazon in being able to share their sounds.
The Google Play Music release date has been set for 13 November, when the likes of the Google Nexus 4 and Google Nexus 10 go on sale, freshly baked with Android 4.2 from the outset.
There's no word on the cost per track as yet, but it's unlikely to be overly expensive given how much the average cost of each song is for the US version of the portal.
