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Google Music Goes Live With Google+ Integration
angry tapir writes "Google Music, the company's cloud-based online music service, is now available to all users in the US and includes song and album sales, as well as an integration with the Google+ social networking site. Introduced in test form and by invitation only in May as a cloud-based song storage and playback service, Google Music will also let users buy albums and songs from all major music labels, except Warner."
The collection is impressive, as is the freedom (yes, it will also work with iOS devices), along with integration with Android.
I have two sources for digital music - Amazon mp3 and now Google Music (not counting other channels). More choices, more competition.
And good to see a better alternative to itunes (yuk!).
(Now get on with your Google hate - that's the flavor of the month here on slashdot these days)
*Sigh*. Yet another fantastic music service not available in my country.
They might as well copy iTunes. How are those knock-offs of Facebook and Microsoft Office working out?
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's why they finally rolled out + access to those of us that use Google Apps, they were about to launch a service requiring money!
When Google will spread the service globally?
iTunes requires a horribly bloated app installed on your computer and clunky syncing of music between said computer and your iOS device.
No, currently you download music anywhere and all your devices have access to that music at once, wherever they are... you see all the playlists from any device, if a song is not stored locally then you can simply ask to download it.
Some of that is made better with Match, since it will upload and store for you songs not in iTunes.
I'm not sure Google's music offering could really be more pleasant to use than this... It's great that they have this as an alternative but they are just basically barley keeping up with Apple at this point. Do they even have the same deal where they will make any of your ripped songs available over the cloud also?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Does iTunes let you upload, store and stream your own music?
ITunes with Match does.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Google Music will also let users buy albums and songs from all major music labels, except Warner.
Will they let users buy albums and songs from other Google+ users who record their own albums and songs?
- tions. Separate deals must be negotiated with each national label in each country. The mind boggles at all the attorney fees.
Some countries may never get the service.
I wrote an eCommerce app a while back. My client struck deals with us distributors for the products she sold, but I could never get her to understand that the Internet was global, and that people from other countries would want to buy her wares.
Last I checked, pirating music was way easier than buying it legitimately and no one cares which country you are in. Could the music industry, just perhaps, stop being a joke?
Spotify, Amazon mp3, Google music; all not available in Australia. iTunes charging so much that it's usually cheaper to buy the physical CD from America and have it shipped across the friggin' ocean. Well, at least there's Grooveshark ... until SOPA closes it down.
At 99 cents an album and no DRM, this service is sure to be a success. That price is reflective of the overheads of digital distribution, and makes it competitive with bitorrent.
Fuck off
Lawsuits and suing over how they want more money in 5... 4... 3...
You can only upload 20K songs. Now for some that's probably okay, but I have a bigger library. Amazon lets me upload my entire library with only minor file restrictions.
It makes no sense to me. My library's that big because I've been buying music all my life. Aren't I the sort of customer Google and iTunes (who also has a 25K file limit for their new cloud service) want?
If you want something, get it now before the price changes. There is no way that price will be kept for long.
The real question is does Google actually have the right to sell the music? Unless something changed in the last 24 hrs, Google only had a deal with ONE music company. All others were still in negotiation.
I really don't get the enormous amount of new music services that have arrived the last few years. Doesn't everybody who cares about music have his favorite stuff on his computer & phone already? What's the use of yet another service that plays everything you already have on all of your devices already?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I joined when it was invitation only and it took 11 days (24/7) to upload my music. Nice to have a free backup for Itunes.
How else would they enforce the "share once" limit to G+ users?
It's quite possible to have fun without buying content! Kill the information monopoly companies (entertainment industry), or you are to blame for the end of freedom!
This is the difference between Amazon and Google (for MP3 service). Google adds DRM, Amazon does not. Apparently they pulled a fast one on everyone today because no one seems to have noticed they are adding DRM to the DEFAULT Android music player. I hope they catch as much pushback as Apple did and abandon the DRM soon. I'd like to see this service succeed. Note the "DRM" they are using is weak, however. But they are not following even the normal Android APIs and hiding their own proprietary playlist formats away from the users and other apps.
This whole thread seems like "Super Smash Bros., Cloud Music Edition".
Google Fanbois versus Apple Fanbois.... FIGHT!
#DeleteChrome
A lot of people have missed one of the most important things about this announcement. Indie musicians, without a label, can sign up, sell their music, and keep 70% of the sales revenue.
For years, we've bemoaned the RIAA and the giant labels for screwing artists out of their fair share. They're parasites controlling the distribution channels and deciding what pop-artist of the year they'll be pushing down our throats. Artists are lucky to get into the double digit percentage of sales revenue for their music, instead of pennies for a $20 disk.
If a talented indie artist or band can put their music on Google Music and get comparable exposure to the artists pushed and promoted by the large labels, it will drastically change the dynamics of the artist/label relationship. Evaluation of music by merit instead of marketing might. There will be a viable way to make a living without signing over one's soul and rights to a label.
This cuts out the traditional middle men in the music production process, and that's what terrifies the RIAA.
Google has the money to buy out the major labels, but instead of doing that, they made a very shrewd strategic decision to instead use the advances in technology to democratize music distribution. That's big, and that shouldn't be underestimated.
AFAICT sharing doesn't work - at least not for songs you didn't purchase. Even if you performed and recorded them yourself! Pfft!
But three of my friends recently lost all their music, thanks to iTunes.
The whole point of the new iTunes/iCloud integration is that you cannot lose you music. Any music you bought from iTunes can be downloaded from iTunes on any computer, or any iOS device logged into the iCloud account.
Even your own music is similarly saved if you buy Match, it uploads what is not on iTunes to iCloud, and you can access it from any computer/device logged into your iCloud account.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Do you have to download the song then listen or does it start streaming as soon as you click it like Google Music?
You can do either - if you just click on it, it will start playing. Or there is also a "cloud" icon for any song not on the device, that you can opt to download it to your device and have it for times you don't have network access.
If you swipe to delete a song from the device then it gets deleted locally and returns the song to "cloud" status.
Also, does this service cost money or is it free like Google Music?
iCloud is free, and does what I mentioned for any song that you have bought through iTunes using your account.
What is not free is Match. That takes any songs you have not bought through iTunes, uploads it into iCloud, and then from there you can access it anywhere just like any other iTunes purchased song. That costs $25/year I believe, if you quit all it should mean is your ripped songs are not backed up in iCloud for easy access.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They only check to see if you're from the US when you sign up the first time. They don't check when you're uploading/streaming your own music.
yeah, very glad to see Google Music accept FLAC uploads.
I have a non-smart phone where the contents of the memory card are accessible as a regular drive when connected to a PC. Easy to manage, yay.
I only have to do FLAC-->MP3 when I'm putting something on there the first time.
My phone doesn't read FLAC, wouldn't want to use it anyway due to space limitations (16 GB card, mostly music). even switched from 320 to 256 in order to save space.
kept the FLAC versions on my PC hard drive, and play those when I'm at home
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I'm still resisting buying digital music until they start selling in a lossless format like flac. For some reason no major stores are willing to do this. I want my high quality archive copy damn it!
seems like early kinks to me
for me, it missed a few .m4a's and accepted a few .mp3's and .flac's that the player refused to play
other songs from those albums (i.e. same rip/same file format/same tagging) went through just fine
the album art was a more consistent issue. However, I tend to put one copy of the cover in the same folder and link to it, rather than embed in
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
if I hadn't already posted, I would have given you +1 Informative for that ... telling it like it is.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
"well, sadly i'm currently 280 songs over the 20k limit for Google Music. i feel like i first did way back when i realized it wouldn't all fit on my 64GB iPod. something about the completionist/archivist in me just doesn't want to bother uploading anything if i can't have it all."
This is a quote from a person who has his own successful band and who also designs and builds websites for bands more successful than his, using Drupal. Most of them are so done up you can't detect the Drupal in them. You've heard of the bands whose sites he does, but if I told you, that would be outing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...if Facebook has shown us anything, it's that people love to "share", as in "inundate us incessantly with all the things they 'like'", be that snapshots, links, friends, etc. People also love to share their music. No, not as in file sharing, but rather as in "Dude, I love this song. Let me crank it up for you..." Couple those to phenomenon on one technology platform and see the wave that will finally sweep RIAA's vision of music distribution away for good.
I had uploaded my collection to Google Music a while back and had enjoyed using it, but the recent changes have really solidified my decision on the platform. Not sure when it came out, but the Music manager is available for Linux now (I had just been using the Windows version via Wine, so I appreciate a native app), and the ability to actually download your music has been added. That combined with the music store basically removes any latent desire I might have had to return to iTunes.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
How is copying my purchased music into a cloud covered by copyright? Basically, when I buy an mp3, I actually only buy a license to use the mp3. So, if I (A) buy an mp3 from B (e.g. Sony Records), and I copy it to a cloud held by C (e.g. Google), I'm creating a copy on someone else storage space. Technically this should be a copyright violation.
If it is not, I would like to start a new company, offering free cloud service. Please copy all your movies and mp3 to my hard disk :-). Oh, and my friends will also start in this business. Of course we are not pirating anything, just providing hosting services to each other and checking the content for legal issues.
Or maybe we can establish a community cloud. Lets call it.... Napster? I think there is already a good software available, we don't even need to modify it, just re-label it :-)
Trolling is a art!
I was surprised that Google requires a valid credit card number for free songs.
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
...is what % of sales does Google take from the artists?
Since learning Apple takes a whopping 30%, I've refused to do business with them.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
FYI, the big bad old "music industry" is actually made up of a tiny handful of rich fatcats and an enormous number of passionate amateur musicians in their early 20s who wanted a job that got them closer to their passion in any way possible. Forget about the guys at the top...it's the hordes of young adults with stars in their eyes who suffer most from piracy.
To quote Dire Straits, "money for nothing and your chicks for free."
ALL OF US would love to make loads of cash doing our favorite hobby. Were do WE go for legislation that turns our dreams into viable businesses?
I know one musician who "works" a menial job for 2 HOURS a day. He spends the rest of his time sleeping, drinking, taking drugs, partying, etc. Despite being destitute, he manages to sleep with hot women all the time with virtually zero effort. They come to him. These girls are all 10's. He balks at women most guys would die for. Oh, her ass isn't round enough. Oh, her tits aren't big enough. He lives in quite the fantasyland! He plays roughly one live show a year (some years none!) He puts out a new album every 1.5 - 2 years. He does nothing most of the time and he bangs an endless stream of 10's. It's just plain greed to expect a bunch of money on top of that deal IMHO.
The funniest part is when he goes on his piracy rant where he states that if it weren't for piracy and all the people "stealing from him" he would have a nice car, nice house, and lots of money to spend on even more alcohol and drugs and parties.
Then there are all of the geeky coders who busted their asses in high school, college, and now the workforce to make a decent living. They're up against H1B's and offshoring. They have their noses to the grindstone working 50-60 hours per a week. They've slept with 3 or 4 average looking women their whole life. The "10's" of the world would laugh them out of the room if they made a move. That describes most of the guys I've worked with over the years. Now WHO exactly is getting the raw deal???
This is why you will never see much sympathy for musicians here at Slashdot.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
You always had the option before from iTunes to re-download all your purchases once per year if you lost anything.
Now that iCloud is up, anything they had purchased before they can get back easily.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley