Do we need another online music service? Samsung certainly thinks so, as it’s just introduced its very own Internet radio service called, weirdly enough, Milk Music. So named for its supposed “fresh” take on music, it’s free to download from Google Play starting today. In fact, you can start streaming tunes as soon as you launch it, no sign-up required. Best of all, the service is ad-free. The caveat, of course, is that it’s exclusive to Samsung phones. Milk Music is a completely separate entity from Samsung’s existing Music Hub subscription service, as the former is focused more as a free radio service that you can use without having to set up an account.
For now, there is no planned revenue model for Milk Music, and it’s considered more as a value add for Samsung customers. Indeed, Samsung representatives were keen on emphasizing that Milk Music is an ad-free service from the start. However, the team will be evaluating that ad-free model as time goes on, and might consider ads in the future. Further, even though you cannot buy songs from Milk Music right now, they’re not closed to that idea either.
At the moment, Milk Music is a U.S. service only. You have to be connected to listen to it — either over WiFi or 3G — and there’s no offline caching. As for whether we’ll see Milk Music available on tablets, Samsung says it’s focused on nailing down the mobile-phone experience for now, which means that won’t be any time soon. Seeing as there are about 200 million Galaxy users worldwide, we’re guessing Samsung won’t have any trouble finding willing testers. The question now is whether they’ll think it’s the cream of the crop, or the sour milk at the back of the fridge.
Read the full story at: engadget.com
