Music Beta by Google

[Green Lantern]

So apparently Google is launching a cloud-based music service. The following is from an article in the Salt Lake Tribune:

New York • Google is launching a service that will let users store music remotely and access it from any compatible device, including mobile phones, tablets and computers.

Google Inc. said the service, which will step up competition with Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., will be available by invitation only starting Tuesday. It says the service, “Music Beta by Google,” will be free at first while it is being tested. It did not say what it plans to charge later.

Google says users will be able to store up to 20,000 songs.

The offering competes with Amazon’s cloud-based music service. This lets users play songs they’ve uploaded on their computers or on smartphones that run Google’s Android. Apple Inc. is also believed to be working on a similar service.

So the question is, can someone please send me an invite?

[Coach McGuirk]

So apparently Google is launching a cloud-based music service. The following is from an article in the Salt Lake Tribune:


So the question is, can someone please send me an invite?

Amazon has had their cloudplayer up for three weeks. They bypassed the itunes app by tweaking their website to work on the safari browser. you get 5 gigs for free to upload to, and buy and album and you get 20 gigs to upload music.

http://www.amazon.com/b/?&node=2658409011

[BigPiney]

So apparently Google is launching a cloud-based music service. The following is from an article in the Salt Lake Tribune:


So the question is, can someone please send me an invite?

You can request an invite and if they like you, they will send it to you.

[Surfah]

Google Music

Been playing with it a bit. It's nice to have all my music in the cloud and I can listen to it anywhere with an internet connection. The interface isn't as slick as I'd have hoped but it's cool to be locked into my google and be able to pull up my entire music library anywhere. You're only allowed to stream to 8 unique devices but you can add and delete devices easily so it's truly unlimited anywhere. You're also limited to 20,000 songs and upload takes a long time. I have been uploading on and off for a few days now and am just at 5,000 songs.

Anyway, it's free. You can stream from your Android if running 2.2+. Songs can be made offline but that is limited to your memory on whatever device you're running.

If any of you are interested I have a handful of invites. PM me if you want one.

[Surfah]

I should also note, you're limited to file types. Here is what's supported: MP3, AAC, WMA and FLAC files.

[Surfah]

Got one left. Still waiting on the email address from one of you.

[Commando]

I just got into spotify, and now that I have a good group of fb friends on it too, I don't see it getting dethroned anytime soon...

[Surfah]

I've been playing with the beta since July on my home network and on my Android phone since August. After our music library was uploaded, I immediately noticed that there were quite a few gaps in the ID3 tags for my mp3 library. For example, a lot of the albums I burned 5, 6, 10 years ago do not include album art. Not a huge deal, but I like the graphical representation of the albums on the interface, so I went through and added cover images to all of those that were missing cover art. There were also several albums (all classical) whose ID3 tags were mislabeled somehow. The google music beta exposed all of those gaps... which was kind of handy actually. The tags are all clean now and the OCD part of me feels a lot better about my collection.

All of our music resides on my (Linux) desktop. I had, heretofore, set up samba to share the Music directory on our home network so that my wife could see it on her (Windows XP) laptop. But, SMB is finicky and she would get frustrated when the drive was inaccessible and become quite frustrated at times ("just Ctrl-Alt-Del" I tell her!). Enter the google music cloud. All of our music is now easily accessible for her using her browser. Huge win (for me)... thanks google music!

However, I have been having problems with the android app. Two specific problems that are both documented (or so it seems) on android forums here and here.

The first problem I have seen is the apparent aggregation of songs that have the same album name (e.g. "Greatest Hits") into a single album. I have three "Greatest Hits" albums (). Using the web-based google music interface, those albums all appear separate and distinct from each other; yet inside the Android interface, the 3 albums (72 songs in total) are all lumped together in a single representation of a "Greatest Hits" album. Definitely a bug.

The other problem I have had is with the "play album" feature. If you nav to "Album view", click and hold on an album to pop up the context sensitive menu and click on "Play" menu item, sometimes (not all the time) the first track of the album will just repeat over and over without moving on to the 2nd track. You getting that too Surfah(/GL)?

I also have several invites I have been sitting on for a couple months. Ping me if interested.

cheers.

I haven't seen that yet but I will try it later to see if I can duplicate the results.

I too have had some of the same ID3 tag issues. Mine usually have one or two songs though out of a few albums that for some reason are independent of the album. One was a Blink 812 (No I will not be ashamed) album that had a song that as far as I can tell is tagged the same as all the others but won't show in the album. It drives me slightly nuts. But it's not that big of a deal. I love being able to access my music library virtually anywhere now though. Overall I am a big fan.

[Commando]

Using spotify and google music aren't mutually exclusive (or, at least, I don't think that they are). For me, google music is a nice way to make my existing digital music library available anywhere I can access the internet (or have coverage on my phone). I have used Spotify (and Pandora, and Grooveshark, and ...) more as a music exploration tool and discovery platform. If I like something I hear using these tools, then I'll buy the digital (or physical) media and add it to my (google music) library.

Just my ¥0.02, YMMV.

cheers.

Hmm. I've been using spotify as less of a music discovery tool than say turntable.fm or whatever... and with the 5 bucks a month I can access my spotify playlists from the cloud too from my droid. Not that I don't own too much music to pay that, but I guess the free aspect of google music must be nice.