After months of anticipation and weeks of dedicated waiting, I’ve received an invite to the Google Music (Beta). Here are a few concrete details I’ve picked up in my early-phase exploration.
The “How” of Google Music
As expected, Google Music takes your entire music library and puts it up on the cloud. From there, so long as you’re logged into your account, you can play, organize, and upload music from any computer where you have internet access – not to mention Android smartphone and tablet devices. To get it all working, you’ll need a few things:
- A beta invite. Want one? Go here, apply, and wait a few weeks like I did.
- The “Music Manager.” This software lets you upload any non–copy protected music file from your system – or even a friend’s system, if they let you download and run Music Manager.
- A modern Internet browser (i.e., any browser released in the last year-and-a-half or so).
- An Android device running OS 2.2+ and the applicable Google Music app
You use the Music Manager to upload your songs to the cloud, and Google’s servers then take care of playback.
Google Music High- and Lowlights
As always with an innovative but young product, the bag of awesome has rat traps and whatever you happen to be allergic to mixed in. Here are some of the best and worst elements of Google Music (Beta).
On the “awesome” side:
- It’s completely free.
- Your limit is “20,000 songs.”
- You can get some free music as soon as you log in.
- The only audio files you can’t upload are ones with copy-protection.
- Your playlist and other data is stored from system to system.
- You can upload music files from multiple computers.
- The Android app stores recently played or specifically selected songs offline, giving you both an online/offline synchronization capable and offline access to your favorites tunes.
- It all looks, feels, and acts about the way a music lover like myself wants it to. The app is intuitive, the online interface has all the options I need (including shuffling, album art, etc.), and the Music Manager is so easy my grandma could use it.
On the “miscellaneous crappy stuff” side:
- The restrictions are noteworthy (you must have Android 2.2+, a good Internet connection, non–copy protected music, and your beta invite).
- There’s a definite lag before a song starts playing. On my high-speed net connection at home (roughly 6.5mbps down) that’s only about two seconds, but the 3G connection from my Android device is as fast as a slug on tryptophan, and often it won’t play the song at all.
- When you edit your music offline, Google doesn’t sync your edits. Rather, they view the online/offline versions as different – resulting in a duplicate upload.
- The songs have diminished quality. It’s not extreme, but it is noticeable.
We previously discussed that Google Music is a direct competitor with iCloud. It’s also fighting against the Amazon Cloud Player.
The question isn’t if this service is good (it is, especially considering the massive storage allotted, the great design, and the lack of a cost), but whether it’s better than the competition. We’ll know a lot more on that front when iCloud is actually at our fingertips. In the meantime, feel free to test the waters yourself by applying for your own Google Music (Beta) invitation.
Related reading
IWD 2018: Eight SEO ladies give their advice on being a woman in search
In honor of International Women’s Day 2018, we wanted to highlight the perspectives of women working in SEO, and how – if at all – they think gender affects the industry and the work that they do. Search Engine Watch spoke to eight successful ladies in SEO to find out their thoughts and advice on being a woman in SEO.
Ranker: How to make a Google algorithm-proof website
Any SEO or webmaster who has ever had a website affected by a Google algorithm change – or feared being affected by one – has probably wished that they could find a way to make their website “algorithm-proof”. One site believes it has found the formula.
Mystified by martech? Introducing the ClickZ Buyers Guide series
Search Engine Watch sister site ClickZ has just launched the first report in its new series of buyers guides, which aims to to disentangle and demystify the martech landscape for marketers.
Pricesearcher: The biggest search engine you’ve never heard of
If you ask Siri to tell you the cost of an iPad near you, she won’t be able to provide you with an answer, because she doesn’t have the data. Until now, a complete view of prices on the internet has never existed. Enter Pricesearcher, a search engine that has set out to solve this problem by indexing all of the world’s prices.
