Now that Google Music has come out of beta, is available to all, and—perhaps most importantly—lets you purchase and download music from a huge selection of popular labels, it's time to pit it against the other leading cloud music services.
Apple iTunes is, of course, the incumbent in this space, with literally billions of songs sold. Amazon, the leading online store, came out with its Amazon Cloud Player just this past spring, and is tied in with the online seller's already well-stocked MP3 store. But each of the services differs from the other two in significant ways.
The two non-Apple services are free, Web-based, and offer Android apps, while iTunes requires an installed Mac or PC app or an iOS mobile device. Each offers some manner of freebies: Amazon lets you store and stream up to 5GB of any music you have, and Google Music lets you do the same for 20,000 songs. Apple's iTunes in the Cloud lets you store any music bought on iTunes free, and lets you download it to any of your iTunes installations or iOS devices. If you pay for the $25-a-year iTunes Match service, you can store up to 25,000 songs, but Match implements the brilliant idea of not requiring you to upload music that's already in Apple's catalog, potentially saving you hours of upload time that the other services would require. Apple also upgrades your copy of a song to a higher quality if its 256Kbps copy is better.
In terms of music selection, as you'd expect, Apple iTunes is in the lead, with a digital music catalog of 20 million songs. Amazon isn't far behind, though, with 17 million. Google only has agreements with three of the four top music studios—Universal, Sony, and EMI—only missing Warner Group. But that's still a whopping 13 million songs and counting, including top-selling acts such as Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. Hot songs almost always cost $1.29 a track on all three services, though as the table indicates, there are the occasional exceptions. Hit albums almost always cost $9.99. All three services also offer a decent selection of free downloadable music, though Google seems the most aggressive in this.
The three services also differ in their connections to social networks. Amazon's MP3 player lets you share any track to your Facebook friends or Twitter followers. Google Music lets you share only to Google+, but your followers can play the track in its entirety, once. Apple has its own walled-garden music social network that lives inside iTunes, Ping. Anything you buy will be shared here if you sign up.
Without further ado, here's how the three cloud-based music services stack up:
| Amazon Cloud Player | Apple iTunes/iCloud |
Google Music |
|
| Service/ New Release Price | Free/$.89-$1.29 |
Free for iTunes purchases/$.69-$1.29 | Free/$.99-$1.29 |
| Free storage allotment | 5GB, plus free for songs purchased on Amazon | 5GB | 20,000 songs |
| Price for extra storage | $20/year for 20 GB | 25,000 songs for $24.95/year | Not available. |
| Stream music in Web browser | Y | N | Y |
| Upload music not purchased in the service | Y | $25/year | Y |
| Download/upload Music via Web browser | Y | N | Y |
| Free music available? | Y | Y | Y |
| Mobile client support | Android, iPad | iOS | Android, iOS via browser |
| Require desktop app for music uploads | N | Y | Y |
| Store's song quality/file type | 256Kbps/MP3 | Up to 256Kbps/AAC | 320Kbps/MP3 |
| Download Stored Music | Yes | Yes | Only purchased from Google |
| Number of devices you can download a song to | 8 | 10 | 8 |
| Social connections | Facebook and Twitter sharing for all songs | Ping | Share purchased songs to Google Plus |
| Web-based equalizer | Y | N/A | N |
| Create playlists/auto playlists | Y/N | Y/Y |
Y/Y |
| File types supported | MP3, AAC | MP3, AIFF, WAV, MPEG-4, AAC | MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC |
For more from Michael, follow him on Twitter @mikemuch.