• Google Launches Cloud Music Service 'Music Beta'

    Alexia Tsotsis

    Alexia Tsotsis is the co-editor of TechCrunch. She attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, majoring in Writing and Art, and moved to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the media industry. After four years of living in New York and attending courses at New York University, she returned to Los Angeles in... → Learn More

    Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

    While the news broke last night, Google officially announced its cloud music player ‘Music Beta’ this morning at Google i/o, rolling out to US users today.

    With Music Beta you can add up to 20k songs to a full featured music manager on the web and sync to your phone, all for free while the service is in beta. Google’s Paul Joyce revealed that the Music Beta killer feature is ‘Instant Mix,’ Google’s version of Genius playlists, where you can select a song that you like and the music manager will create a playlist based on songs that sound similar.

    Music Beta automatically caches music on your phone, and you can select albums, artists and playlists to pin (or download to your phone) for offline listening.

    While everyone at i/o will get an invite, mere mortals can check out the service and sign up for an invite at music.google.com/about

    Company: Google
    Website: google.com
    Launch Date: September 7, 1998
    IPO: NASDAQ:GOOG

    Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...

    → Learn more