How can Google stand out from the crowd, and convince millions of consumers who haven’t warmed up to access models that they don’t need to own music to enjoy it? To find out, I’ve both tested the service since its launch Wednesday and met up with Paul Joyce, Lead Product Manager for Google Play Music on the sidelines of the Google I/O developers conference where the service was launched. Joyce politely declined to answer some of my questions, but the conversation gave me a good idea of what’s in store for the music service with the confusingly long name.

Right now, it’s more or less like all the others

Google’s premise for Play Music All Access is simple, and you’ve heard it before: Play millions of songs, on your desktop and on the go, for one low monthly fee. That’s what Spotify and all of its competitors have been offering for some time now, and Google doesn’t mess with the basic recipe. All Access costs $9.99 ($7.99 if you sign up before the end of June), and it offers streaming access to songs from all three majors and most significant indie labels.

However, there’s one big difference: Google’s subscription music catalog seamlessly integrates with the company’s music locker, with which users can store up to 20,000 songs for free. That’s an interesting combination, and it hasn’t been offered by any of the other major subscription players before. It makes it possible to have Google generate smart radio stations based on your own music collection, or mix subscription tracks and CDs you ripped in custom playlists, and then access these on the go without having to worry that some of the tracks won’t be available.

Joyce told me that the locker is especially good for tracks that aren’t available through the subscription offering, or even as MP3 sales – mashups, imports and other kinds of rarities.

In the future, All Access will be a lot more social

But All Access isn’t just about filling the gaps left by other services. It also wants to be better at engaging you – which has been one of the problems of existing services. “People sign up, and then they don’t know what to do afterwards,” Joyce said. Having millions of songs at your disposal doesn’t exactly make choice easy, and there is some evidence that a good chunk of users simply tune out.

How does Google want to address this issue? Joyce gave me one hint: “There is more we can do to innovate in social,” he said.

Play Music doesn’t offer much of a social integration today – but that could change soon.

And we are not talking here’s a list of the unfortunate music choices of all the people you didn’t really care about in high school social, which has been Spotify’s original model of social discovery. “If you treat all your recommendations of all your friends the same, then that is a problem,” Joyce argued. However, he wasn’t convinced that the Rdio model – which is very much like Twitter in that it offers you to follow tastemakers – is the right approach either. It’s simply too much work to find the people who can give you good recommendations, he argued.

So how is Google Music’s approach to social going to look? Joyce didn’t go into details, only telling me that the goal was to give you “the right music from the right people at the right time.” However, one has to assume that it would be powered by Google+, which gives us some idea of how it could work: You could get music recommendations from circles and communities, with the ability to share circles of influencers with others. Instead of just curating albums, Google Music’s editors could curate circles of influencers, and users could simply follow the 50 most influential indie rock bloggers with one click.

What else does Google have up its sleeve?

There have been ongoing reports that Google is going to launch a separate music subscription service on YouTube, which makes about as much sense as having four separate messaging apps from the same company (but that didn’t really stop Google, either). Joyce didn’t want to go into any specifics. “YouTube is a great asset for Google,” he told me, and then added: “We will find exciting things to do together.” Maybe it won’t be two separate services, after all?

Google also plans to bring Play Music All Access to other countries “soon,” said Joyce. Countries that already have Google’s music cloud locker will be first on the list for an international expansion, and currently include the UK, France, Germany and Spain.

And finally, there is iOS. Joyce’s lips were sealed when I asked him about the potential of bringing the service to the competing mobile platform, but it would make a lot of sense, and follow Google’s overall theme of unification across mobile and desktop platforms. Of course, this would be the first time that any Play service was available on iOS – but I predict that Google will have to take that step if it wants to seriously compete with Spotify and Co.

Take a look back at our live coverage of Google’s flagship conference, which started at 9am PT Wednesday. We’re not expecting as major a news event as we have in past years, but there will be no shortage of updates to the company’s plans for Android, Chrome, YouTube, and its cloud-computing services. We’ll have a full contingent of GigaOM reporters at the show bringing you updates both here and throughout the course of the day, so stay tuned.

So far, Google has announced:

• 900 million Android activations
• Three new Google Maps location APIs
• Synced Google Cloud Messaging accounts, which will let you sync notifications across devices.
• New Google Play Game Services features that can do multiplayer gaming through Google+
• Android Studio, a new development environment for Android app developers.
• A new design for the Google Play app store that highlights tablet apps.
• Google Play Music All Access, a subscription music service.
• A new educational initiative involving Android tablets and apps for education.
• Sweeping updates to Google+, including a new stream design.
• Conversational search within Chrome.
• Big changes to Google Maps.

Google has been negotiating to launch a music service for some time, and apparently struck licensing agreements with all three major labels just in time for its developer conference, which will be held in San Francisco this week. That means the company beat Apple to the punch; Apple has reportedly been in negotiations to launch a Pandora-like radio service.

Google will have to compete with a growing number of subscription music services, which include market leader Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody, Muve Music and the yet-to-be-launched Beats music subscription service. However, Google would be the first company to combine a music locker for cloud-hosted personal music collections with a subscription offering.

Check out all the details of the announcement, as well as everything else Google is going to unveil, by following our Google I/O coverage, including a live blog of the keynote starting at 9am PT Wednesday.

While it might not feature anything as crazy as last year’s Google Glass-streamed skydive over downtown San Francisco, if you love (or love to hate) Google’s world, here’s what you can expect this week. We’ll update this post as new stories are posted.

Day 3:

• The GigaOM Show: Google I/O themes and takeways that affect you
• The future, according to Google
• Some of the best articles you need to read about Google I/O
• A sneak peek at YouTube’s future as it rolls out new channel design for everyone
• Redbox Instant is coming to Google TV soon, Roku up next

Day 2:

• So Google Compute Engine is out, your move Amazon
• Google, NASA quantum computing project could bring stronger machine learning to the masses
• SMS integration coming to Google Hangouts. Will Google Voice follow?
• Google CEO Larry Page: Do as I say, not as I do
• How Google Music wants to take on Spotify, Rdio and Rhapsody
• Google jumpstarts Glass development with apps form Twitter, Facebook and Evernote
• What do good shoes, Google+ and Facebook have in common?
• How Google cleverly improved Android without releasing Android 4.3 at Google I/O
• The road less traveled: How Google does Streetview for the world’s oceans
• Why Google thinks the GPU is the engine for the web of the future

Day 1:

• Live blog: Google I/O 2013 showcases Android, Chrome, YouTube and more
• Google I/O statshot: 900 million Android devices activated
• Google Apps set for a communication upgrade with deeper Google+ integration
• Google officially launches its music subscription service at Google I/O
• Google turns up location data usage on Android apps
• What Google was thinking when redesigning the new Google+
• Prepaid gives Google a huge Android boost (and Apple has noticed)
• Eight years later, Google reinvents its Maps for a data rich web
• Coming to a school near you: Google launches Android app store for education
• How Google is setting the new search standard with voice and knowledge graph
• Google TV will receive Android 4.2.2 update as well as latest version of Chrome
• And, bam! Here’s Google Compute Engine
• Google’s growing cloud just got a NoSQL database
• Here’s the real theme of Google I/O: Service unification between Chrome and Android
• Why the snap of a photo changed my mind about Google Glass
• Google gains appeal for cloud services, but there’s this company called Amazon

Pre-show expectations:

• Why the time has come for Android @Home to finally make a splash
• Google I/O: Arming for the battle of the public cloud stars
• What to expect for Chrome and Android at Google I/O 2013
• Where to watch Google I/O 2013 live online
• Reports: Google will launch music subscription service at I/O