Google Launches Free, Ad-Supported Tier For Its Streaming Music Service

by Joshua Gulick — Wednesday, June 24, 2015, 12:00 PM EDT

Google launched a free version of its Google Play Music subscription service this week. The ad-supported free streaming service comes just days after a public spat between Apple and Taylor Swift put Apple Music back in the spotlight weeks after its official unveil.

The ad-supported Google Play Music service is a typical ‘try before you buy’ promotion. “We hope you’ll enjoy it so much that you’ll consider subscribing to Google Play Music to play without ads, take your music offline, create your own playlists, and listen to any of the 30 million songs in our library on any device and as much as you’d like,” said Google product manager Elias Roman in a blog post.

The free version of Google Play Music is kicking off with an array of radio stations that are meant to provide a soundtrack for your life. You can get out of bed to Waking Up Happy, switch to classic rock on the Having Friends Over station and then, ah, Enter Beast Mode.

Google’s curated radio stations are the result of its acquisition of Songza, which bodes well for the quality of the stations. You can try the ad-free Google Play Music on a PC right now. Google plans to get the Android and iOS apps out by the end of the week.

Tags: Google, Google Play Music, (nasdaq:goog)

Joshua Gulick

Josh cut his teeth (and hands) on his first PC upgrade in 2000 and was instantly hooked on all things tech. He took a degree in English and tech writing with him to Computer Power User Magazine and spent years reviewing high-end workstations and gaming systems, processors, motherboards, memory and video cards. His enthusiasm for PC hardware also made him a natural fit for covering the burgeoning modding community, and he wrote CPU’s “Mad Reader Mod” cover stories from the series’ inception until becoming the publication editor for Smart Computing Magazine. A few years ago, he returned to his first love, reviewing smoking-hot PCs and components, for HotHardware. When he’s not agonizing over benchmark scores, Josh is either running (very slowly) or spending time with family.