Google’s music locker in the cloud, called Play Music, has just outsmarted every rival service out there bymore than doublingits storage limit, letting you store 50,000 songs in the cloud as opposed to the previous 20,000-song limit.
The change, effective immediately, gives Google Play Music more competitive footing against Apple’s scan-and-match $25 per year iTunes Match service that supports storing up to 25,000 user-uploaded songs in iCloud (more if songs are purchased from the iTunes Store).
“Google Play Music now lets you upload up to 50,000 tracks so you can mix your entire collection with our 30 million songs,” said the search giant.
But again, iTunes Match is a paid service ($25 annually also buys you ad-free iTunes Radio) while Google Play Music lets anyone upload twice as many songs to the cloud versus iTunes Match, at no cost.
As for Amazon Music, that service lets you store 250 songs in the cloud free of charge. In exchange for a subscription fee of $25 per year, Amazon Music users can upload as many as 250,000 tracks to the service.
Last updated in mid-February, the official Google Play Music iOS app for the iPhone and iPad gained revamped artist and album pages with descriptions and an all-new immersive Now Playing experience.
Featuring Google’s Material Design look and feel,support for the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus resolutionsand containing a whole bunch of useful features, the service is actually worth checking out and highly recommended, especially given that the service is also available for Android,on the weband through aChrome extension.
To upload songs to Google Play, use the Google Play Music Manager app for Windows, Mac and Linux PCs. On your computer, go toplay.google.com/musicand click Upload Music (Add Music if you’re a Chrome user) near the top right. Now click Download Music Manager and follow the installation directions.
