SAMSUNG DEBUTS ' MILK MUSIC ' AND AD-FREE STREAMING SERVICE FOR GALAXY SMARTPHONES ONLY

Samsung’s Milk Music is only available on its Galaxy devices.

            On Friday, Milk Music, a streaming radio app from Samsung, hit the Google Play app store. And just like the buggy Jay Z Magna Carta Holy Grail app that Samsung released last July, Milk Music is exclusive to Samsung’s Galaxy devices. If you have an Android phone from Motorola, HTC, LG or any other maker that isn’t Samsung, you won’t get Milk Music. But don’t fret, you aren’t missing much.

                 What they don’t tell you in the press release: Milk Music doesn’t offer anything significant that you can’t find in other music apps—so far any way. The free app does streaming radio, just as Pandora, Rdio, Spotify, Beats Music and Google Play Music all do. In fact, the back end of Milk Music is Slacker Radio, another streaming music app that you can download on any Android phones, iPhones, and even Windows phones.For those who do dive into Milk, more than 13 million songs can be streamed via more than 200 radio stations Samsung and Slacker have cooked up, as well as by genre.

                   For now, Milk Music’s core benefit is that it doesn’t charge users a subscription fee or serve up ads. (Usually, it’s one or the other.) But this is temporary. Samsung says Milk Music will be ad-free and fee-free for a limited time, but users will eventually have to pay up or hear advertisements every few songs. Samsung isn’t saying when this will take place.Likewise Pandora, Rdio, Spotify, Beats Music, Google Play Music and Slacker all offer subscription-based music streaming services, and if you’re new to each of these apps you’ll be able to start off on a free trial of each respective service. So, while Milk Music is new, its approach to streaming music is anything but.