Google Music Makes Formal Debut

Google Music opened to the general public today. (HowStuffWorks.com screenshot)

Yesterday in Los Angeles, Google finally opened its Music service to the public in an official press event. The service, which has been in beta for a few months now, officially allows users to store up to 20,000 songs for free.

Google’s obvious competitors are Apple’s iTunes Store (with the new iTunes Match service) and Amazon Cloud Player. iTunes Match doesn’t require subscribers to upload music; instead the service identifies albums in the user’s collection and provides streaming access. And unlike Google Music, iTunes Match carries a $24.99 annual fee.

Amazon’s Cloud Player service is free, but only allows users to save 5 GB worth of music — except music purchased and downloaded from Amazon, which doesn’t count against the cap. Users interested in more space can purchase it starting with an additional 20 GB for $20 per year.

The company also launched a music section of the Android store, with offerings from more than a thousand record labels, including music industry giants EMI, Sony and Universal. CNET’s live blog of the event was quick to point out that Warner is one of the service’s major-label holdouts.

Google Music may well be considered a boon for independent artists, who will be allowed to create their own pages and sell songs at prices they set themselves, unlike in Apple’s iTunes Store and other services. There will be no fees for artists to upload their tracks, and they’ll be able to keep 70 percent of the revenue from their Google Music sales.

Another interesting point: On The Verge, Thomas Houston wrote that Google+ users will be able to share entire tracks purchased via the Android Market with their friends for free. Also, to entice customers to join the service, Google will be offering exclusive artist content and probably a free song of the day.

Of course, this puts Google in the business of selling music, setting it squarely in competition with Apple and Amazon. Apple and Google have been frenemies for a while now, competing on a number of fronts. But at this point Google is head-to-head with Amazon in selling digital books and music, just after Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet came out — though it runs on a version of Google’s Android operating system.

I’m interested to see what’s going to happen. Will Google Music make a big splash in the marketplace? Or do people prefer streaming services like MOG, Spotify and Rdio? Which do you prefer?

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