Google Play Music Free Storage Limit Gets Hefty Boost

Good news for those with massive music collections. Google today announced it has more than doubled the free music storage limit on Play Music, allowing you to keep more of your music collection in the cloud for easy access on all your devices.

You can now store up to 50,000 songs in Play Music for free to stream or download on your phone, tablet, computer, or TV with Chromecast. That's a huge jump from the previous limit of 20,000 tracks.

Note that any music you purchase from the Google Play store does not count against your song limit.

In comparison, you can download up to 25,000 songs on Apple's iTunes Match service, but you'll have to pay $25 a year for the privilege. Amazon Music lets you store up to 250 songs from your personal collection for free, or up to 250,000 tracks if you upgrade to a paid subscription, which will also set you back $25 a year.

To claim your free storage, simply sign in to Google Play Music and you add your music collection through the website, a Chrome extension, or Google's Music Manager app for the desktop. The setup process will guide you through adding the Chrome app, which offers easy uploading if you use Google's browser. You can choose to simply upload your entire iTunes library, or select other music folders.

You can also opt to sign up for Google's $10-per-month Play Music subscription service (or get a 30-day free trial if you're new) for access to the Web giant's library of 30 million songs, but you do not need to subscribe just to store the music collection you already own. After uploading your personal collection, you can access it on the Web when you're at your computer or from your Android, iPhone, or iPad when you're out and about.

"And best of all, when you upgrade to a new computer or phone, your music comes along, too," Google Play Music Product Manager Andrew Stromme wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

:story: PC Magazine