Google Music Is Forced to Limit Users Due to "Piracy"

No matter what you think about piracy it's hard to argue against the fact that many times it's easier to pirate something than it is to pay for it. If you grab a bunch of albums from The Pirate Bay, you can listen to them however you want, move them to any of your devices and share them with friends.

If you buy the same albums from Google Music for example, you'll find it's not so easy. Google Music, apart from the store, offers a cloud sync service.

You can upload your Music to the Google cloud to make sure it's accessible anytime, anywhere. It's a smart and obvious service, something that is almost trivial with today's technology.

For most people, it works as intended, but not always. Some users are complaining that they've hit the device authorization limit and they can't install the Google Music app on their mobile devices.

Google Music enables you to authorize up to 10 devices at a time. Your music will be available to all of these devices, but no more. The limit is there for obvious reasons, to please the copyright-dependent music labels.

There's no technological reason for the limit, it's all about the labels' fear that people will "pirate" music easier if they can sync to as many devices as they want.

Considering everything else the recording industry believes and does, this is mild. But it's still ludicrous, nobody is going to start sharing music illegally via Google Music when there are countless easier alternatives. Try telling the labels that.

Once you've hit the 10 device limit you have to de-authorize one device to make room for another. But even that only works four times a year. Granted, few people have more than 10 devices, even counting all family members.

But enthusiasts who enjoy trying out or building custom Android ROMs will go through several ROMs in a year or even in a day. And each of this ROMs counts as a new device.

These users can contact Google support and they'll get help, but the issue remains, these limits are artificially imposed to protect against a non-existent threat and all they serve is to hassle the people that actually pay.