14 DAY TRIAL // Google's Music service launched a few months ago, in private beta, and we haven't heard much about it since. Google is supposedly toiling away, making the service better, but, in the meantime, it's launching a new blog to showcase some of the music than can streamed for free from Google.
"Today we introduced Magnifier, a new music discovery site that will keep your collection growing," Paul Joyce, Product Manager for Music Beta, announced.
"Magnifier will feature great music and the people who make it, including videos of live performances, interviews with artists, explorations of different musical genres and free songs that you can add to your Music Beta collection," he explained.
The blog will showcase a featured artist as well as a song of the day. Music Beta by Google enables you to upload your songs to the cloud to make them available on any device, but it also offers some free music which you can add to your collection.
Google is adding more free music all the time and the Magnifier blog aims to make it easier for users to see what's new and what's hot.
"The featured artist on Magnifier this week is Grammy-nominated indie rock band My Morning Jacket. We’re giving away two of their tracks to Music Beta users, one of which is an exclusive to Magnifier: a live performance of 'The Day is Coming'," Google explained.
That said, you still need a Google Music account to access any of the songs. You can request an invite though and chances are you'll get one soon after. It doesn't seem like people are flocking to Music Beta, so you're guaranteed to get in.
There are several alternatives to Music Beta by Google and most of them are better, in terms of features.
Amazon Cloud Drive and Player for example, offer pretty much everything that Google does, albeit with less storage space for free, but it also comes with the Amazon MP3 Store, enabling users to add more music to their collection.
Google doesn't offer the option, it may be working on its own MP3 store, or integrating a third-party one, but it couldn't come fast enough.