Google has officialy launched today a new online music service. The online music locker service will users to store and access their songs wherever, similar to one recently started by Amazon.com.
This motning at Google I/O, the company also talked about the momentum of Android-based devices as well as the next version of Android, called "Ice Cream Sandwich."
Music Beta by Google functions much like a digital music locker, allowing users to upload their music to a remote server and play songs from any computer browser or through an app that runs on smartphones and tablets using the Android operating system.
The service lets users upload your personal music collection to the cloud for streaming to their computer and Android devices. With the new service, users' music and playlists are automatically kept in sync, so if someone creates a new playlist on his or her phone, it?s instantly available on his /her computer or tablet. Users can use a feature called Instant Mix to create a playlist of songs that go well together. Users can also listen to music when they're offline: The service automatically store users' most recently played music on theri Android device and they can choose to make specific albums or playlists available when they're not connected.
The service is launching in beta today to U.S. users and is available by invitation.
Amazon's music service (Cloud Drive) allows users to store about 1,000 songs on its web servers for free instead of their own hard drives and play them over an Internet connection directly from web browsers.
Users could listen to songs they have uploaded to the service but will not be able to download the files.
And like the Amazon Cloud Drive player, Google music service is being introduced on Tuesday without any prior licensing deals with major music labels, following months of fruitless negotiations.
Google also today added Movies for rent to Android Market. Users can choose to rent from thousands of movies starting at $1.99 and have them available across their Android devices - rent a movie on their home computer, and it'll be available for viewing on their tablet or phone. Users can rent from Android Market on the web today, and we'll be rolling out an update to Verizon XOOM customers beginning today. Google will start rolling out the update to Android 2.2 and above devices in the coming weeks.
Android OS everywhere
This morning at Google I/O, the Android team shared also some updates.
Google said that in just two and a half years since the release of the first Android device, the number of activated Adnroid devices have reached the 100 million, with 400,000 new Android devices to be activated every day. In addition, 200,000 free and paid applications are currently available in Android Market and 4.5 billion applications have been already installed.
Over the past two and a half years, Gogole has also shipped eight releases of Android and there are now more than 310 Android devices around the world, of all shapes and sizes. This morning Google also talked about its next version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich. Google said that its goal with Ice Cream Sandwich was to deliver one operating system that works everywhere, regardless of device.
"Ice Cream Sandwich will bring everything you love about Honeycomb on your tablet to your phone, including the holographic user interface, more multitasking, the new launcher and richer widgets, " said Hugo Barra, Product Management Director, Android.