Google Play Music vs. VOX Cloud Player
Google Play Music is capturing the minds and hearts as a strong cloud storage for music. It is available on so many platforms and devices that its popularity is, of course, understood. Android smartphones and tablets, iOS-run devices - all work perfectly with Google Play Music. So far, the absence of the web player seems to be the only substantial disadvantage.
VOX Cloud Player turns out to be a worthy rival of Google Play Music. And here is why.
CAPACITY
Google Play Music capacity used to be just 20,000 songs. After the recent update it has become 50,000.
VOX Cloud (previously called LOOP) stores the UNLIMITED amounts of music. It can be 50,000 songs or 500,000 songs and even MORE, there is no edge for the true audiophile’s music in cloud.
FORMATS
Google Play Music can recognize FLAC format and that is one of the things it should be praised for. It also supports MP3, AAC, WMA (Windows only), OGG, and ALAC on Mac OS only.
VOX Cloud still has a much WIDER selection to offer, though: aif, aiff, ape, alac, aac, m4a, mp4, caf, flac, mp1, mp2, mp3, mpc, sd2, vorbis ogg, spx, tta, wav, wma. Audio formats supported but played after downloading only in Loop (not streaming): it, mod, m4b, s3m, ay, mo3.
MATCHING FORMAT
Google Play Music sets a limit for the matching format. It’s only 320 kbps MP3. The maximum file size to upload is 300 MB.
VOX Cloud gives what it gets. It matches only the songs of the original quality. FLACs stay FLACs! (Round of applause, please!)
PRICE
Google Play Music annual subscription costs $0,00. Yes, you spend zero on it (but you also can keep only 50,000 songs, with a size of the file less than 300 MB). Sorry for the sad news, audiophiles.)
VOX Cloud has a variety of subscription plans: from $4.99 monthly, $49.99 annual subscription price and other options. All plans provide you with the UNLIMITED range of songs you can upload into the storage.
HARDWARE
Google Play Music goes along with Android smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Chromecast, Android TV, and Sonos.
VOX Cloud is available on Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch. While using VOX cloud for streaming music through VOX Music Player for Mac, it is possible to connect to Sonos audio devices. Android and Windows support is to launch later on this year.
REQUIREMENTS
To use Google Play Music one must have Google account. Pretty convenient.
To use VOX Premium with Cloud features, you have to sign up for VOX account then download VOX Player for Mac and VOX Player for iPhone to sync music between them and listen to it freely on these devices.
DEVICES SUPPORT
Just 10 devices make the limit for Google Play Music.
VOX erases the limits. The limit on the number of devices you can use the service on is one of them. If you’re a music recording studio, and you have, say, 6 Macs, 2 Apple Watches and 11 iPhones, how do you get access to the same music on all of them? VOX can be the easiest solution.
In the end of this feature battle, we want to mention some great integrations VOX Premium features can provide.
- SoundCloud integration, and the feed from the people you follow on SoundCloud can be accessed freely
- Radio that hosts over 3,000 stations worldwide
- LastFM integration
- the opportunity to listen to YouTube music directly through the Mac app (the same feature for iPhone is currently being developed). No fees applied for that which makes it a great YouTube Red alternative
What to choose - VOX Player or Google Play Music - the decision is up to you.
