T-Mobile subscribers may get “unlimited” internet access, but the company caps the amount of “high speed” 4G LTE data you can use each month before your connection is slowed down.

Earlier this year the company started removing music streaming services from that data cap. In June T-Mobile launched Music Freedom which lets subscribers stream tunes from select online music services without that data counting against their caps.

Now T-Mobile is expanding Music Freedom to include 6 more services. By the end of the year there will be at least one more addition: Google Play Music.

music freedom

The new additions to Music Freedom include AccuRadio, Black Planet, Grooveshark, Radio Paradise, Rdio, and Songza. Voters in an online poll chose Google Play Music as their most-wanted addition, and T-Mobile says it’ll be coming to Music Freedom later this year.

Customers could already stream music from iHeart Radio, iTunes Radio, Milk Music, Pandora, Rhapsody, Slacker, and Spotify.

Over the last few years I’ve kind of gotten used to loading a dozen or so albums of MP3s on my phone so I can listen to music on the go without racking up data charges, while using Songza, Pandora, TuneIn, and Google Play Music around the house when I’m connected to WiFi. I doubt I’m alone in doing that.

If T-Mobile’s move to decouple streaming music from other data charges catches on, it could change the way plenty of people use their phones on the go.

At the same time the move gives priority to certain types of data… something that cold be cause for concern among folks that are worried that Net Neutrality and an even playing field for startups will soon become nothing more than quaint notions from the early days of the internet.

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6 replies on “T-Mobile customers can now stream Rdio, Songza, Grooveshark for free (Google Play Music is coming)”

  1. good news for those using android tablets instead of a car stereo… my 12GB a month of charged usage is now only 3GB was able to drop my data plan down to $10 a month without changing my data habits at all.

  2. I think this is a very bad trend. … but it’ll work out very well for me personally, I guess. Or it would if I wasn’t on an unlimited plan already; Google Music is most of my data use.

  3. Really hosing consumers with this one. Our industry-beholden FCC (and legislators).

  4. This just sounds like it’s going to be bad for the industry in the long run. Treating certain data differently may have a negative effect.

    1. Forget the industry. It isn’t them that needs protecting from these practices.
      It’s the consumer that gets shafted here.
      Data is data pay for it and use it.
      Stupid rules are only an excuse for a cash grab on the part of the carriers.

      1. If it’s bad for the industry then doesn’t that mean it’s bad for the consumer? For example, a monopoly is good for the company but bad for the industry.

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