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Google Music Beta
Namel3ss
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
People have been talking about this for a while, but I haven't seen a thread on it.
What is it? A very promising looking cloud service to hold up to 80gb of your music that you can access from anywhere without having to have it physically stored on your device. It looks very handy and easy to use. http://music.google.com/about/
It is currently invite only, so I was hoping to use this thread for people to discuss what they've heard about or experienced with this service; as well as, distribute beta invites, if any of our illustrious technology members have some spare invites they would like to distribute to fellow Penny Arcade forum members.
I am currently someone looking for an invite.
What is it? A very promising looking cloud service to hold up to 80gb of your music that you can access from anywhere without having to have it physically stored on your device. It looks very handy and easy to use. http://music.google.com/about/
It is currently invite only, so I was hoping to use this thread for people to discuss what they've heard about or experienced with this service; as well as, distribute beta invites, if any of our illustrious technology members have some spare invites they would like to distribute to fellow Penny Arcade forum members.
I am currently someone looking for an invite.
May the wombat of happiness snuffle through your underbrush.
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Would be convenient for podcasts too.
Invites are also starting to be sent, so if you signed up for the beta then keep an eye on your inbox.
Okay, a couple quick notes - legalese seems pretty much what you'd expect - waives Google of all liability for copyright infringement, designates all actions of storage/streaming/etc are your decisions and not Google's, states that they're recording various things (most invasive appears to be MAC or mobile device identifiers in order to authorize devices to use your account).
For people who get invites and want free music, choose all genres. I either misread something or it wasn't explicitly stated, but when you're picking what genres you like, they give you some free music in those genres to use at the beginning - I should have just picked all of them because I tend to like songs in most every genre, but prefer certain ones which I picked.
Streaming seems generally good, although there's a couple stutters every now and again. Chalking that up to my uploading songs simultaneously.
You download the uploader, point it to your folders/player of choice and it automatically starts tossing songs in there. Preference in order seems to be to newer/higher rated songs. Everything uploaded so far are ones which I gave 4 or 5 stars in iTunes (and it's automatically applying a "thumbs up" to those songs after uploading. I presume that 4 or 5 will be thumbs up, 3 will be nothing, and if I happen to have any 2 or 1s - I think there's a couple of them I keep around because they're in musical soundtracks of sommat - they'll be thumbs down).
It's also grabbing my play counts in iTunes. And, apparently (while I was typing this post) my playlists, too. That's pretty nifty. None of the Smart Playlists (so far, damnit), but all the regular-made ones are in.
The software apparently uses Gracenote, not sure how that impacts things.
Storage space is 20,000 songs - not based off of song size at all, just number of songs.
This is not a backup/storage solution, there is no way to re-download any songs you upload. I don't know why, but I had the impression that I'd be able to redownload any songs I put into my account as they were password protected, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
Music player is clean and pretty intuitive overall. There's also an "Instant Mix" option where you highlight one song, click the Instant Mix thing and it picks out 25 'similar' songs. Haven't messed with it much.
And no, no invites that I can send out. Some of my friends have first dibs if they come up, but if I get any extras, I'll ask around for emails.
And now to try out the android app!
I suppose I could remove old podcasts from the iTunes library and leave the files alone, but I'd rather not if it can be avoided.
Daaaamn you goooogle
This isn't really a big deal for me since I don't really buy much music. My library is pretty complete for what I like, and I mainly listen to podcasts on the road anyway.
Does anyone know if the manager is compatable with PowerPC Macs? Due to some laptop replacements recently, the only complete copy of my music library is on my old iMac.
I would love a section for podcasts built into this. Something where I could give subscribe and it would just fetch it for me instead of having to download it, then upload it back to google. I suppose there are other apps for mobile devices that manage podcasts so you don't have to download/sync them. I am still using an old iPod until I can swing a monthly data plan anyway, so whatever. Maybe there is another service like that already? I remember Odeo doing something like that, but once those guys invented Twitter Odeo went away, and is some sort of enterprise video solution now.
I really wish it wasn't uploading all my Audiobooks. I would like to have a similar service for Audio Books and podcasts, but it needs to be separated from music.
You may have to download a different "music" app. I had to do so.
What version of Android are you running? I assume they wouldn't let you install the app if it was the wrong version, but who knows.
I don't purchase much music, but I think the purchase from Amazon, download + cloud backup, then google Music automatically keeping the newly downloaded items synced is going to be a great system.
You have a local MP3 for iTunes/iPods/streaming around the house, and two online backups that both stream to anything. Plus the way Amazon works you can redownload as many times as you want, which is something I see people complaining about with Google Music Beta. I think that Music Beta should enable the playlist pinning to the HTML 5 version so some music could be stored locally on your machine. You can do it on the mobile version, why not the desktop version?
it's like a fucking third world country over there, "bandwidth caps" is as dated a term as "monarchy"
Not sure I follow this. From what I understand, we just stream from either the site or the app, not download anything.
I'll be poking at this for the near future. Not sure how useful it's going to be for me, but I guess I'll see.
What I meant is, Amazon's service is just like an internet hard drive. What ever you upload (photos, documents, music) can be downloaded to which ever PC you happen to be on at the moment. The Cloud player also lets you play back Music on whatever PC or phone you are using without actually downloading.
Some people have been complaining that Music Beta doesn't allow you to redownload a copy of your songs after you have sent them to Google. Amazon has more of a backup feel to it than Google's offering.
With the pinning playlists feature on the Android player I imagine it won't be that big of a deal. The main raeson I would want to download a local copy is for areas when I am away from wifi or good 3G. I've already got the local copy on my PC, since that is where I uploaded everything from in the first place. If they add playlist pinning to the HTML5 player down the line, I think that would make the whole system perfect. That way you can keep a local backup on a desktop machine, and just sync playlists to laptops and phones that you are using.
I know they won't add it, but if they could add some sort of family account that would be amazing as well. Right now, if my wife and I want to use the same music library we'd both have to be logged into my Google Account. She doesn't have a smart phone now, but when she does get one in the future we are gonig to have to reupload the library so she isn't piggybacking on my account.
Gotcha.
Also, I thought the rest of the world was pretty familiar with bandwidth-caps too. I think I've heard of Canada and Australia having them. That's only 2 others, but I figure it'd be similar elsewhere.
Only thing that pisses me off about Google Music Beta is that it apparently requires flash. Boooo! Google puts together Chrome and we still use Flash. I wonder how Amazon does theirs; I know it'll play on an iPhone so no Flash there.
I think most countries have these caps and quite often far less generous than the US ones seem to be. I had a cap of about 5, then 20GB in NZ and I've got about 40 here in the UK. Both of which are third world countries with backward ass internet I guess
I think "backward-ass internet" is only accurate if you cherry pick a few countries like Japan or South Korea as your comparisons.
Yup.
dealwithit.gif
Edit: also, Australia and NZ are the two worst examples ever for the discussion at hand. The UK only slightly less so
It's a little weird.
Infrastructure is a bit easier when you have like 12 people in your country and they only live in three different places.
Just sayin'.
Also I have decided I don't like conventional music organization. With thousands of files uploaded sorting through my list using things like Artist or Album is impossible. I have so many 1 or 2 songs from so many different people that the list is monstrous. On my PC I have it sorted into various folders with different meanings to me. Here it's all lumped into one big list.
As I have never (at least not since Generation 2 but I only had a few songs back then) used iTunes or an iPod how do you people manage these messes?
I KISS YOU!
though it's never going to be anything but a secondary source of song storage for me, never gonna give up my zune pass
It was too much for me to handle. Maybe id3 tag management is nice if you have a good organized library with complete albums but when I have a folder with hundreds of happy hardcore songs (pretend like I said classical music so you don't judge me) that are all from different artists and from different dj mixes, the list becomes a wretched mess. I could fix it all with genre tags or playlists but that would take an impossibly long time.
I am just stuck in the past with organizing my music on my hard disk by a folder structure. I never use playlists and just open things one at a time in Winamp.
I KISS YOU!