Google Play Music Coming To The UK - But Has It Been Worth The Wait ?

Google Music launched in the US almost a year ago and the good news is that the music service is finally coming to the UK. It'll land on November 13th which is when Google's recently announced Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet will both hit stores !

The delay of the launch of Google Play Music in the UK was due to licensing issues , which have also plagued Amazon's Appstore, BBM Music and many more multimedia services. However, that's all in the past so the question now is has Google Music has been worth the wait ?

The short and definitive answer is that Google Music has been well worth the wait.

With Google Play Music users can upload up to 20,000 tracks in high-quality (320kbps) to Google's cloud-based storage totally free. That is quite amazing because other providers charge a subscription for users to store their tracks, such as Apple and Amazon who charge over £20 a year.

After uploading your music to Google's servers you'll be able to access the library from any Android smartphone, tablet and even desktop PC's. You can even make tracks available for offline access for times when you don't have an internet connection.

Things get even better because the version launching in the UK comes with Google's "Scan and Match" feature. Google Scan & Match will scan your library and see if the tracks match those already available on Google's servers. The benefit of this is twofold because you'll save time uploading unnecessary tracks and all the track information will be filled in automatically and correctly !

Google Play Music also gives users the option to purchase DRM-free music , although at the current time we don't have any details on the pricing strategy. We presume Google will make their prices competitive because selling music is their main way of monetising Google Music.

Another excellent feature of Google Music is its Google+ integration which enables you to recommend music to friends. However, things get even more impressive because a friend can listen to one of your tracks in full before deciding whether to go to purchase it.

As soon as 3G get new information about the UK launch of Google Play Music service you'll be the first to know !