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Google Play Music Comes To India With Subscription Service Missing

But the tight Android integration is an advantage against competition.
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After a wait of years and 'When will Google Play Music come to India?' questions at every Google event, it has finally been launched in India. Google Play Music store is now live, but most disappointingly, it does not offer a subscription service yet.

There were signs that this was about to happen. In July this year, a Redditor had posted a screenshot of the pricing of the songs in the Play Store, hinting that Google Play Music might soon be coming to India.

As of now, there is no sign-up fee. You can go to your desktop and register for the service through the Google Play Music settings. You will be charged ₹50 for Google Services if you're enrolling with a credit card or debit card that is not already registered with them.

Google Play Music

Then you can go to the library and search for songs and albums. You can listen to the song preview but for a full listen, you have to purchase the song. The base price for a song is around ₹15 and an album will cost you from ₹75 to ₹150.

"Now you can download your favorite local and global music on Google Play in India, plus get free storage for up to 50,000 songs from your music collection," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. "Currently these services are only available to users with international credit cards, but we'll be expanding soon to additional forms of payment."

The Google Music Play store is showing a library of available songs with the prices listed below them. Users can search for a song, purchase it and play it later.

Google Play Music

Google Play Music has more than 35 million songs in its library, however some tracks might not be available in India.

There is plenty of competition already in the Indian music streaming space, with Saavn, Gaana, Wynk, Hungama, and even Apple Music trying to grab customer share. Google Play Music has the advantage of tight integration with Android, but the lack of a subscription service certainly won't help their cause.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.