The ability to gift a Music subscription to another user on Google Play appears to be about to launch. Earlier today Music Gifts showed up on the Google Play Support page for gift cards and promotional codes, and we’ve been shown by one Ausdroid reader that the feature is now live and ready to go for him at least.
The feature, called Music Gifts already has its own support page, titled ‘Gifting & lending digital content’. The ‘lending’ component doesn’t seem to be live as yet, nor does the web based gifting website which the support page points to: play.google.com/music/gift, that page simply heads to a webpage with ‘403 Forbidden’ error.
That’s not the end of the story however, Manoj supplied us with screenshots showing that Gifting is certainly alive and well in his Google Play Music app. The option to Gift Music appears under the Settings menu where he gets a choice to gift 1, 3 or 6 months of All Access.
As you can see, the pricing is equivalent to what you’d pay for a one month subscription, simply multiplied by the months you want:
- 1 Month: $11.99
- 3 Months: $35.97
- 6 Months: $71.94
The current highest version of Google Play Music – v6.0.2005S – was only released the other day and unfortunately doesn’t show signs of the ability to gift music, and unfortunately Manoj was unable to confirm with us immediately which version of Google Play Music he was running.
According to the Support documentation, to Gift Music you’ll need contact information for the recipient including your gift recipient’s name, email address, and you’ll be given the option to send a message as well – something along the lines of ‘Happy Birthday’ etc. The gift will be sent to the recipient as an email, with a ‘Redeem Gift’ link in the body that the recipient will then click to redeem the gift on Google Play – similar to existing Promotional Codes used by Google to supply digital content such as a free movie rental. The sender will be able to re-send the link if the recipient loses or accidentally deletes the email.
If you don’t want the gift, the subscription price will be returned to the sender, so you can’t actually redeem a Music Gift for cash or credit. If you already have Google Play Music All Access account, your account simply won’t be charged for the duration of the gift you’ve received.
It’s fairly well low-key for now and no doubt Google will want to announce this one fairly soon as the option is now appearing in the app – at least for one user. Exactly when this will be announced it’s not clear, but it appears to be ready to go. From the support documents, Music Gifts will launch in Canada, France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and of course Australia, now we just need the announcement and the switch to be flicked.
I just clicked your link and it is online for me in web browser.