Google Music now live, allowing you to buy music via Google Play

Google Music has finally launched in the UK, meaning you can buy tunes straight from Google Play and stream or download them onto your handset.

Just navigate to Google Play on your Android phone or tablet, choose music and browse or search the store.

You can choose to look through albums, tracks or just type in your search if you have a specific artist in mind.

Google also features some specific themes on the Google Music homepage. At the time of writing, Best of British and Mercury Music prize nominees and past winners were being promoted.

Once you've chosen a track, you can view a huge amount of information about the artist and track itself, including release date, genre, running time and other music by that particular artist, plus similar artists.

Tap on the price of the track (they start at 79p for a single track, but most new releases are priced at £1.29) and you're taken to the standard Google Play payment screen. Pay for the purchase and it's added to the cloud. From here, you can choose to listen to it on your device via the Play Music app, or via your PC's browser at play.google.com/music.

To download the track on your device, you can select Keep on device to listen offline. You're also given the option of adding the track to a playlist.

You can share purchased music with friends, although they can only play the song or album once for free.

Google Music was announced for Android devices at the launch of the Google Nexus 10 and Google Nexus 4 earlier at the tail end of November.