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Earlier today it was reported that Google may have imposed a device deactivation limit of four devices per year on Google Music. This was likely to protect the recording industry against music sharing, but this adversely affects many users in ways Google probably overlooked. Namely, ROM updates and installs can sometimes be counted as a new device on your Google Music list. Once you hit 10 devices you have to unauthorize some to use Google Music on another device.

Most ROM users will find that their list is filled with duplicate entries, and if they can’t deauthorize devices more than four times in a single year, they’ll soon be SoL on using Google Music on future ROM installs.

You either limit the ROM installs or you get rid of Google Music, and it’s a choice that yours truly was faced with upon hearing this news. Users tried to deauthorize more than four devices earlier to confirm that this was the case, and they were indeed met with an alert.

But it seems Google’s lifted the limit for now. We’re not sure if they’re doing this temporarily to allow users a chance to deauthorize, if this is a permanent move, or if they’re looking into a different method for counting authorized devices (a MAC address or IMEI number would work great, we think).

We’re hoping it’s the latter two situations, but Google hasn’t released any official word to let us know either way. If you need to unauthorize more devices, now is your chance to do so. Head to Google Music and click the ‘music settings’ button in the upper right corner.

UPDATE: Google has issued this statement via their Google Play FAQ:

Yesterday we made a change to our device policy for music on Google Play.  Any user can associate up to 10 devices to his or her account.  Once you have connected 10 devices, you may add a new device only by deauthorizing an existing one from your account, and you may do this up to four times per year.

We limit the number of times you can swap out new devices at the request of some of our music partners in an effort to limit abuse. We understand this has caused some issues for users who often deauthorize and reauthorize the same device, and we are currently re-implementing the solution in a way that works for our users and music partners.

We apologize for any inconvenience and will update this page as new changes are made.

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