Google offering free music streaming to Chromebook owners

Search giant attempts to entice more users to its All Access subscription service by offering a 60-day free trial.

Google Music Access All Areas is usually $9.99 a month, but for anyone with a notebook powered by Google's Chrome operating system that appears in the qualifying list, access to its radio stations and catalog of 20 million tracks will be free for two months.

Google made the announcement on its Google Play Google+ page on Tuesday and the offer follows the publication of data from Edison Research that shows its music streaming service has only managed to amass a 3% market share in the US since its launch in May.

That makes it the country's fifth most popular internet radio and music streaming service, behind Spotify (6%) in fourth and Apple's iTunes Radio (8%) in third. Pandora is currenlty the most popular internet radio and streaming service in the US, with a 31% share of the market. However, it has taken the company 14 years to arrive at that point.

Competition within the music streaming space is expected to become white hot over the course of 2014 as existing companies such as Spotify attempt to build their market share and new entrants from Apple and Google to Beats Music attempt to make a splash too.

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times published on Tuesday, Apple is already "pressuring" major record labels to offer it more exclusive releases like the recent Beyoncé album that launched solely on iTunes and solely in full album form, in order to fight off increasing competition from streaming services.

Google's offer is valid until September and is open to Chromebook owners in Australia, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US.

Find out which Chromebooks are included in the offer (first question): support.google.com/chromebook/answer/2703646