Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Google Continues to Fill Out iOS App Catalog With Music App

“It just took us a little longer than we thought to bring it up to the level of polish,” product manager Brandon Bilinski told the Verge.

The app has many of the features of its Android equivalent, but lacks a crucial one: The ability to buy songs. But that’s normal these days — the Kindle app for iOS doesn’t let users buy books, either. Neither Amazon nor Google wants to pay Apple the 30 percent commission it commands on in-app purchases.

Google Music for iOS also lacks Google’s new instant playlist “I feel lucky” radio station.

With the debut of Google Music, there are now more than 20 different Google apps for iOS. This newest offering extends Google’s strategy of having player/reader apps for consuming content, but no central “Google Play for iOS” for buying and managing content in one place.

There’s already a Google Play Books iOS app, but not yet Google Play Magazines or Google Play Movies & TV, though those would be the logical extensions.

However, the next big launch to look for is the expected YouTube music subscription service.

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Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus