Samsung Milk Music Streaming Service Available for Free on the Web

To celebrate the one-year anniversary of its Milk Music streaming/ Internet radio service, Samsung announced that it will now be offered as a web client for PCs, Macs, and Chrome OS machines for free. Users have to create a Samsung account to utilise the Milk Music Web Player.

Though, the word 'free' here has one condition - it allows users to only skip a maximum of six tracks at once. Alternatively, interested users can pay $4 (approximately Rs. 250) for its premium service, which is available for all users including ones who own a Samsung device - who get station and song sync support from the Milk Music service on mobile. The premium version of the Milk Music Web Player allows for unlimited skipping of tracks.

However, Samsung still hasn't updated the quality of streaming audio and it tops out at 128Kbps on the Milk Music Web Player. In comparison, arguably more popular streaming services like Spotify, Rdio and Google Play Music provide an option for streaming at 320Kbps. In fact, even Indian apps like Gaana and Saavn provide that option.

The web-browser version of Samsung's Milk Music streaming service, available at milk.samsung.com, uses a linear slider which is conducive for mouse controls. It has a design which is characterised by huge album art covers stretching across the length of the display with controls overlaid on top of it along the edges. This ensures that the controls are not a distracting element.

Similar to the app version of Milk Music, users can pick and choose nine radio stations of their choice, from across 17 broad genres of music, to be displayed on the opening screen. It also displays similar artists but they aren't linked and that is a bit of a downer. Also, the lack of social network integration like sharing music on Facebook or Twitter might not go down well with some users.