Google Music Is Official !

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Google Music was made official today, November 16th, 2011 at a launch event in Los Angeles. This is big news for music artists and fans alike because of the new Google Music Store. The Google Music Store is an intuitive platform for both hit making top 40 superstars and aspiring newcomers alike. Google's database of over 13 million songs starting at 99 cent will be available immediately, with more music soon to follow.

Google Music aims to be a much needed bridge for unknowns to be discovered and get their music out to the world. Jaime Rosenberg ( Google Director of Digital Content for Android ) outlined how the new platform allows the artist to control their own music and set pricing for it to be downloaded. This along with loads of exclusive content, music sharing and recommendations between Google+ Circles, set it apart from other music platforms like iTunes.

During the announcement, they discussed  Androids recent and dramatic growth. The Android platform occupies 52.5% of the current smartphone market. In light of that, Google Music users will enjoy integration with Google+ and their music content will be available via Google cloud service on their Android phones, tablets and computers. Google Music customers will enjoy the convenience of being able to access and play up to 20,000 music tracks across any browser including iOS devices free.

T-Mobile was also on hand for todays announcement and they boldly displayed their commitment to Android as they will be the first wireless carrier to fully support Google Music. T-Mobile wireless subscribers will have access to free and exclusive music content, additionally T-Mobile is the only carrier to allow Google Music subscribers to pay for their music downloads on their monthly wireless bill. This seems logical as T-Mobile was the first wireless company to partner with Google as they launched the very first Android phone the HTC built (Google G1) in 2008 on T-Mobile exclusively. This partnership has continued and T-Mobile currently offers the largest line-up of  Android phones running on Americas Largest 4G network which currently reaches over 200 million people nationwide in 208 major markets .

With their entry into digital music sales, they will be mixing it up with Apple and Amazon to claim their portion of the 6.8 Billion dollars in digital music sales projected for 2012 by Gartner, a leading tech research firm. Google has done their homework and as they shared at the launch event, they intend to apply what they learned during Google Music BETA to make this service a compelling digital music offering that can compete among giants.

Via Google Music, T-Mobile, Gartner Research