Spotify and Apple Music Face Competition from Google

And that’s on top of Amazon, Deezer, Tidal and Pandora. While Spotify is a pioneer in this market and Apple is the tech giant which brought digital music to the masses, Google is taking both of them on with its own music-streaming service, backed by the tech giant’s expertise in digital products and content.

Like the others, Google Play is $10 a month for unlimited streaming content, allowing you to play music on demand, browse playlists and discover new music through internet radio. The service is supported on both Android and iOS devices, in addition to a handy web browser. In fact, there is no desktop version of the app, so if you want to add your own MP3s, you do it by dragging the file into a browser window.

Since it’s based on a browser, syncing across devices is incredibly pain-free, especially when compared to Apple Music’s buggy software. Even more impressive is the addition of YouTube Red, which gets you an ad-free experience on YouTube and the ability to close the app for listening to music.

Another important aspect of streaming software is content and playlists. Spotify, Apple and Google are relatively even in terms of releases and timing, so you’ll only have to worry about artists who have pulled their material from streaming like Taylor Swift.

Playlists are mostly handled by Google’s acquisition of Songza, which compiles metadata on tracks and individual music libraries to provide curated playlists and song recommendations.