These days, many major technology and internet-based companies have been trying to figure out a way to take over a slice of the music business. Google’s answer, which was introduced earlier this year, is Google Music, a cloud service, currently an invite-only and US-only beta product, that stores the user’s entire music library on the cloud. While initially only available for Windows, Mac and Android, an iOS version of the said service is now available.
The announcement was made by Google itself in a tweet:
If you aren’t quite yet sure how Google Music functions, it’s very simple: from a standard computer, users are able to upload their music library – currently up to 20,000 songs – to the “cloud”. From there, songs can be played from any device with an internet connection, just by visiting Google Music’s website or running the official app, in Android’s case. New songs can be uploaded at any time from regular computers, yet smartphone users can simply play them.
While Google made a full-fledged app available for Android at launch, the company is taking a different approach with its iOS strategy, by accomplishing all that a native app would do in a web app. There’s no fancy installation process, or App Store jargon, just head to music.google.com from Mobile Safari to start using the service this very moment, provided you reside in the U.S. and also have a Google Music account.
A weaker user experience would be expected, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, aside from Safari’s controls, it acts just like a native app, down to the smooth and nice-looking transitions. The web app requires you to authorize it to use up to 25MB of storage on your iPhone or iPad, in order to cache the content somewhere while its being streamed down from Google’s servers. worth. Better yet, it’s possible to adjust the song’s volume, or move to a different song in the playlist, all using the system’s native controls, and the best part? It runs seamlessly in the background.
When asked about plans for a native app down the road, Google dismisses any intention of bringing one to the App Store anytime soon, despite admitting that it might consider one in the future:
we’re considering all options to bring the service to more people, but don’t have anything official to share.
Whatever the reason, the web app performs very well. Since Google Music requires a permanent connection to the Internet in order to function, perhaps bringing forward a native app wouldn’t make much sense for the company.
Check out more screenshots below:
(via TechCrunch)
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