Anyone using Google Music?

[psylichon]

I've heard bits and pieces about their new service, but only recently realized they offer free storage up to 20,000 songs (of any size). That's twice the size of my library. There are several apps to stream from their service, including a free one called "Melodies for Google Music."

Just curious if anyone's tried to use a Google Music account with their iOS device. It seems like a nice, free, streaming alternative to iTunes Match. I'm uploading my library now... should be done in a week or so with my upload speeds. :/

 

[iP5]

Jealous, Google music is available in the UK?

Sent from Tapatalk

 

[psylichon]

Not yet, but people are apparently doing this workaround or using unblock-us.com

 

[psylichon]

Really? No one? This is quite a killer free alternative to iTunes Match. It's a nice way to backup your music library, too.

I'm using the $2 gMusic app and it's well worth it. Fast, smooth UI very similar to iPod app plus offline download capability.

 

[TheDeafGuy]

Hmm... I'm gonna go check it out.

 

[theorioles33]

I actually forgot I had a Gmusic account. I may have to revisit it since iTunes Match doesn't work that well for me.

 

[psylichon]

If you have any Google account, you have a Gmusic account already. You just need to sign in on a desktop and click the agreement.

 

[Mathew Connelly]

hm, Gmusic has been on my list of to-do's ever since I heard it coming. however, unless they start rolling it out in other countries, i doubt it would gain popularity that quickly. very much hope it doesn't end up like wave or buzz. I wonder if indeed login in from a US ip as suggested would allow me to still access my music (if I supposedly uploaded it) from NZ...

 

[Santa]

20,000 songs, encoded at 320kbs for free. That's a better deal than I thought. I might have to try this puppy out.

 

[psylichon]

I'm tellin' you guys, this one is a no-brainer, if for no other reason than free music backup.

 

[chris]

Meant to chime in earlier. I used Google Music early on and enjoyed it. It's real benefit comes if you have an Android phone. You can crack the plastic on a new phone and immediately have access to your entire collection of music. I haven't spent extensive time with iTunes Match, so cannot compare the two.

 

[psylichon]

Its real benefit comes if you have an Android phone. You can crack the plastic on a new phone and immediately have access to your entire collection of music.

I should point out that Google's webapp for Gmusic is really good. Just go to music.google.com in Safari on the iPhone and it will run in the background and behave just like the iPod or other full-featured music app (minus album art on the lock screen... you can still control playback, though).

 

[chris]

The biggest hurdle for Google Music is the initial upload. After that, I enjoy how it auto-uploads music. It's always there waiting for me.

 

[Santa]

The biggest hurdle for Google Music is the initial upload.

Yep, I've been running about 2 hours and I've gotten 250 songs uploaded. And I've got pretty peppy upload speeds. 20,000 will take quite a while!

 

[DigitalAtrophe]

I've been using it since it was released but admittedly I have little mobile usage of it. gMusic tends to work well with it from the little amount of time I've spent with the app.

I uploaded roughly 8000 songs (I think) and it has been working just fine. It's my "go to" music library for the desktop. I don't use iTunes for anything.

I'm paranoid so I still keep my music library on a network disk. I have a "temp" folder in my Library where I copy new music to, it uploads to Google Music, then once it's complete I file the albums to their appropriate places on my drive.

 

[styfle]

I'm tellin' you guys, this one is a no-brainer, if for no other reason than free music backup.

This was the initial reason I started using it. I wanted to backup all my music. I rarely use it since all my music fits on my 32GB iPhone, but there will probably come a time where I want to access my music and I don't have a phone. All I need is to login to Google Music

 

[booyah14]

It's not available in my Country yet!

 

[Tinman]

I have it and iTunes Match. For me I prefer Match but Google Music has its benefits too. So I have it running, chugging away uploading newly added tracks.

I like how Match essentially keeps my iTunes library synced among all my PCs. macs, and iOS devices. Don't think I could get that level of integration on iOS from Google Music.


Michael

 

[psylichon]

I guess I like it because I'm weaning off iTunes as my home music networking software and using XBMC instead. Since I'm just drag-and-dropping music to my phone now, there is no need to keep it organized in all of iTunes picky little ways. No matter how much I clean up my tags and artwork, importing my library into iTunes is still a crapshoot and stuff always just disappears into the tagless ether so I've given up on it entirely. It all shows up just fine on Google.

And so far I've found Google's streaming so responsive it really almost feels local, even on 3G. Doesn't sound like it's recompressing either but I haven't done any real critical listening.

 

[itsalexaye]

I was using Google Music (just switched from Android to iPhone 4S) but now I'm going to start using iTunes Match.