Google Opens its Digital Music Store; Invites Users to Discover & Share

Jumping on the digital music store bandwagon, Google has finally unveiled its hopeful iTune-killer, simply called Google Music. The company launched a beta for the service earlier this year that allowed its users to upload up to 20,000 songs to the cloud for free, and now that the service is out of beta, it offers much more, and could give competing services a run for their money.

“Google Music is about discovering, purchasing, sharing and enjoying digital music in new, innovative and personalized ways.“

In a sense, Google is trying to meld many different music services into one. You’ll be able to discover new artists by generated recommendations based on what you listen to most, in addition to being able to peruse staff picks. There will also be one free song download each day, to help introduce you to an artist or maybe even a genre.

Can’t get enough of a certain song? You can share one free listen with your friends on Google+ (undoubtedly a creative way to try to make people actually use Google+). Of course, you can also purchase songs as in a regular digital music store, though some free ones exist as well. With “millions” of songs available, it’s fair to assume that Google Music will have most of what you want – at least hopefully.

Music on the service is being made available in seemingly DRM-free 320Kbit/s MP3. Google says that you can stream the music through any Web browser or the official app, or download the file straight to your PC and do whatever you like with it there – as long as it’s for your personal, non-commercial use. Given that Google would have had a greater capability than anyone, I really hoped to see the company roll out a FLAC option with its music service, but no such luck.

Well, there’s the fact that the service isn’t even available to those outside the US, so there are other more important issues at the moment. If anyone out there gives this service a go, relay your experiences in our thread!