Most android users must be familiar with the stock music app of the android platform ‘Google play music’ which comes bundled along with phones running Kitkat and Lollipop version of the OS. This app can be used to play songs and audio files stored in the memory of your phone as well as stream songs that you have uploaded to the free cloud storage or if you are a paid subscriber you also get access to Google’s 30 million songs which can be streamed on demand.
Initially, Google allowed free storage of up to 20,000 songs on the cloud, which has now been increased to 50,000. In comparison, Apple allows storage of up to 25,000 songs on the cloud for its iMatch service subscribers which comes at a price of $25 a month. This is a good opportunity for those with limited expandable memory on their smartphones who have a huge music collection.
However in the Indian context this is not a very feasible option since streaming of songs from the cloud storage would consume data every time the song is streamed. Indian cellular operators do not offer true unlimited wireless data making it impossible to use the cloud-based streaming. In the Indian market apps like Saavn, Hungama, Gaana and the soon to be released Jio beats will work since they allow downloading of songs for listening to offline. Users prefer to download the songs once over WiFi and then listening to it offline over and over. This works even while in areas of poor network coverage or while on an airplane where cloud streaming is not available.
