Samsung and Google made a move to increase their visibility in the music-streaming space with the announcement that Google Play Music will be the default music playing and streaming service on all new Samsung mobile devices. The partnership begins with yesterday’s release of Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones.
The deal comes with several sweeteners for owners of new Samsung devices. Each Samsung phone or tablet will come with a free three-month trial of Google Play Music which includes ad-free streaming, more than 40 million on-demand songs and curated playlists. Google is also doubling the free storage space listeners can use to upload their own music collections from 50,000 to 100,000 songs.
Google Play Music includes a subscription to YouTube Red which allows ad-free streaming of all YouTube videos. YouTube Red is only available to people living in Australia, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand and the US.
Samsung and Google also promise that Google Play Music will work with Bixby, Samsung’s intelligent voice assistant when it becomes available. Samsung says Bixby will come online later this spring.
The partnership between Google and Samsung should work to the benefit of both companies. Samsung’s attempt to launch its own music streaming service in the US, Milk Music, was unsuccessful. When the company shut Milk Music down last August they announced,
We have made the strategic decision to invest in a partner model focused on seamlessly integrating the best music services available today into our family of Galaxy devices. We believe that working with partners will accelerate innovation, enhance device sales and provide amazing new experiences for our customers.
It looks like Google is the partner they had in mind.
Installing Google Play Music as the default on Samsung mobile devices is almost guaranteed to increase Google’s music-streaming market share. The Infinite Dial reported the listening habits of US listeners aged 12 and over based on an age-weighted, randomized digit-dialing survey carried out by Edison Research. The survey was carried out in January and February 2017 and indicated only 6% of those surveyed had listened to Google Play All Access during the past month. In comparison, 32% had listened to Pandora and 18% had listened to Spotify. The new partnership with Samsung is likely to increase this percentage as Samsung is the largest maker of Android smartphones in the world.
Thus far, the Google Play Music benefits are only being offered to people who purchase new Samsung mobile platforms. It would be nice if Samsung and Google would offer the same benefits to users of older Samsung devices after the buying surge for the Galaxy S8 smartphones settles down.
