Google Play becomes part of new Samsung devices

Google’s music streaming service Google Play Music is getting a boost – in Australia and abroad – through a new global deal with Samsung.

The deal starting with the newly arrived Samsung Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+ phones,Play Music is the default music player on all Samsung mobile phones and tablets.

Samsung users can still download their favourite music streaming service as Spotify or Pandora to their devices. But the new partnership sees Google Music offer “special features” to Samsung customers.

For a start, Google Music offers only cloud locker space for 50,000 tracks to be uploaded and streamed. Samsung phone users get 100,000.

Each new Samsung phone customer gets a free three month trial of Google Play Music.

When Samsung’s virtual personal assistant, Bixby becomes available shortly, in the southern autumn, it will be integrated with Play Music. Customers can voice command Bixby to choose a song or style of music for them.

It becomes a competitor to Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. But there are some who suggest that Samsung should have gone with Google Assistant than Bixby.

Google also provides access to YouTube Red, the ad-free version of online video site YouTube. Australia is one of the five countries where Red is available. The others are the US, New Zealand, Korea and Mexico.

There are no subscription figures for Google Play Music. But it is safe to assume they would be much smaller than those of Spotify and Apple Music.

This year, Edison Research’s The Infinite Dial found that only 6% of Americans over 12 had used Google Play in January or February. It was 32% for Pandora and 18% for Spotify.

Now having thetop slot on what looks like being the biggest selling Android phone this year will give it a much needed boost.

For Samsung, the new partnership is its strongest move into the music space.

In 2014 it tried to take on Spotify with its own music streaming service called Milk, powered by Deezer. It was a disastrous move and it pulled down the shutters on Milk two years later.

It learned its lesson. With a stiff upper lip, Samsung announced at that time, “We believe that working with partners will accelerate innovation, enhance device sales and provide amazing new experiences for our customers.”

More recently there was some talk of buying out Tidal. But for whatever reason, the deal didn’t turn out.