Culture

Google Unveils Music Streaming Service

Will require paid subscriptions

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Google flaunted a new subscription music service, Google Play Music All Access, at Google I/O. The service will launch Wednesday in the United States for $9.99 per month. People who sign up by June 30 will pay only $7.99. It will eventually roll out to more countries.

Google Play Music All Access will join the fray of existing music services and battle to have the most songs to stream and most users. Spotify, which boasts 24 million monthly active users and 6 million paying subscribers in 28 countries (costs $9.99 per month), has the largest music library with 20 million licensed songs when compared to Pandora, Slacker and iHeartRadio. Pandora still has the most users with roughly 70 million monthly active users and 200 million registered.

Google engineering director Chris Yerga hopped on stage at the developer conference to announce Google Play Music All Access, which he described as "a music service that's about music" and not the technology behind it.