Google Debuts Cloud Music Matching Service and It's Free

It's been a long, long time in the making, but Google is finally able to offer a cloud music match service like Apple and Amazon.

Unlike Apple or Amazon though, Google is doing it for free, which is surprising to say the least since Google has to pay to license the music used to matched your offline library.

"Our new music matching feature gets your songs into your online music library on Google Play much faster. We’ll scan your collection and quickly rebuild it in the cloud - all for free. And we’ll stream your music back to you at up to 320 kbps," Google explained.

The feature was available to European users already it turns out, a rare first for the EU market as new features and especially content licensing usually come to the US first and to Europe much later, not to mention the rest of the world.

Where available, the music manager app now scans your library and almost instantly matches it with music in the cloud.

What's more, any song you stream will be served in the highest 320kbps quality. However, if you decide to download your music at a later date, you will get a version with the bit rate matching your original file.