The tremendous potential for online music portability and sharing has resulted in several software giants coming out with musical applications for web based music storage and sharing. And the best part is that they do not charge you for using these services. The biggest of such services available today is of course Google Music or Music Beta as it is officially known is now available to Ubuntu users.

Google Music or Music Beta as it is officially known is an online music streaming platform that enables users to upload up to 20 000 tracks for free in their Music Account. The service lets users with accounts in it stream their favorite music to their mobile or computer wherever they are.

Now Ubuntu users can also make use of the free Cloud based music storage service provided they have access to the service. The move only indicates the rising importance top service and application providers are showing for Ubuntu as it beckons to be a powerful competitor to Windows and Mac OS based platforms.

All they need is an internet connection. The service lets users search for tracks online, make playlist, import playlists from other players such as I Tunes and many more exciting features. The feature can be accessed in desktops and laptops by an application called Google Music Manager that syncs music files on your hardisk with your online account. Music is cached for offline play on both the desktop and mobile devices.

When the Music Beta was released, the Google Music Manage was available only for Windows and Mac OS versions but now after careful analysis Google has decided to make the service available to Ubuntu users as well by launching the Google Music Manager application for Ubuntu. This is great news for the entire open source community as they felt let out initially when the service came into existence. Google was widely criticized for not showing some respect for the 3rd most used OS in the world.

The service is currently free but is available as a limited invitation based format in the US only.Others can can follow the workaround by requesting an invite from your Google account via an US proxy , which in turn would get you to music.google.com Let us know if it works !

Download : music.google.com (32bit, 64bit .deb)