Google Music Beta

nedd

Hi,

So has anyone been using Google Music Beta?

I got my invite yesterday (after registering using a proxy) and downloaded the app (had to find a version online because the Market wont let me download it).

The app works, after all that hassle, and it seems to work quiet well. When you sign up Google give you some free tunes on your cloud drive and they show up in the app and i have had no problems playing them.

The only problem is that you have to use an application to upload music to the cloud, no web interface and not possible from your phone. This is a pain for me because I use Linux at home and I cant install the Music Manager application (its only available on PC or Mac).

Anyone else using it? Thoughts or opinions?

blackdog2

nedd wrote: »

Hi,

So has anyone been using Google Music Beta?

I got my invite yesterday (after registering using a proxy) and downloaded the app (had to find a version online because the Market wont let me download it).

The app works, after all that hassle, and it seems to work quiet well. When you sign up Google give you some free tunes on your cloud drive and they show up in the app and i have had no problems playing them.

The only problem is that you have to use an application to upload music to the cloud, no web interface and not possible from your phone. This is a pain for me because I use Linux at home and I cant install the Music Manager application (its only available on PC or Mac).

Anyone else using it? Thoughts or opinions?

I haven't heard of this. Is it starting out like gmail, where only subscribers can invite people? If so, would the op like to let me try it?:D

[mods, if this is too far let me know, will edit it accordingly]

EDIT: Not available in Asia either. Sometimes I wonder why they bother...

nedd

I don't think you need to get invited by a user. You need to log onto music.google.com through a US proxy and request an invite from google. I did this some weeks ago and my invite come through yesterday.

long_b

Signed up online via a proxy, no invite yet
Downloaded an apk but it didn't run (Galaxy Tab, Gingerbread) - FC on launch

BionicRasher

also signed up a few weeks ago via a proxy - actually the day it was announced.

How long ago did you sign up?

nedd

I signed up for the invite on announce day also.

jwcurtin

After getting invited I uploaded most of my music You don't need the proxy after getting the invite. I've successfully tested it on my phone (HTC Legend with 2.3.3) and it works very well! The uploading is slow, but it's very easy to do if you have iTunes or the likes.
The Music Player

The "Music Manager" application for the computer

Advanced Music Manager Settings


It won't add anything with DRM, but annoyingly enough it is adding podcasts.

akamossie

There you go for Linux http://m.androidcentral.com/using-google-music-manager-ubuntu-made-easy?utm_source=AndroidDigest&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+androidcentral+%28Android+Central%29

Vokes

I like the web interface - it's short on options atm but looks elegant and easy to use. Currently uploading songs which is slow going which is understandable.

Does the music only sync down to my Android once the full library is uploaded? Can't see anything in the Android App yet.

jwcurtin

Vokes wrote: »

I like the web interface - it's short on options atm but looks elegant and easy to use. Currently uploading songs which is slow going which is understandable.

Does the music only sync down to my Android once the full library is uploaded? Can't see anything in the Android App yet.

You need to enable the account in settings in the Music Player. Then in the normal music menu click Menu (on your Phone) > Library Options > All Music

long_b

long_b wrote: »

Signed up online via a proxy, no invite yet
Downloaded an apk but it didn't run (Galaxy Tab, Gingerbread) - FC on launch

:)
Invite received, tunes uploading. Apk available that runs fine on the Tab.
Like the UI, free music interesting enough. Happy days

One tip though, do make sure your music is tagged properly before you up it

Vokes

jwcurtin wrote: »

You need to enable the account in settings in the Music Player. Then in the normal music menu click Menu (on your Phone) > Library Options > All Music

Cheers, i knew there must be more to the Android App. It turns out I had no Settings button under Menu with with to pair it to my account.

So did a re-install of the apk and lo' and behold the option has now appeared.

Have noticed that a couple of albums are not collating together on the cloud, i.e. some albums have split into twos with 9 songs in one folder and one song in another.

CiaranC

Vokes wrote: »

Cheers, i knew there must be more to the Android App. It turns out I had no Settings button under Menu with with to pair it to my account.

So did a re-install of the apk and lo' and behold the option has now appeared.

Have noticed that a couple of albums are not collating together on the cloud, i.e. some albums have split into twos with 9 songs in one folder and one song in another.

Id say the tags (album name) are case sensitive etc

How does this compare to grooveshark for anyone who has used it?

h57xiucj2z946q

Also, how does it compare to Winamp?

nedd

Right so I have been using this for a couple of days now, have a good selection of music uploaded.

The app is Ok, does everything a music App should do. The playing music from the cloud is seamless and I have had no problems with that so far.

My only gripe is that the lock screen player on Cyanogen doesnt work 100% with this app.

Other than that I think this is great.

One question to people though, if Google start charging for this service, which they are planning on doing at some stage, will you pay?

CiaranC

Bo Modern Roadway wrote: »

Also, how does it compare to Winamp?

Does winamp offer cloud storage/streaming?

I paid 20 dollars for a year of grooveshark recently, use it with three's all you can eat data and it works a treat. Would consider paying a similar amount.

nedd

Winamp doesn't do streaming but I think Damo is just wondering how the Music app compares to Winamp as a media player.

Winamp is a better media player, it has an EQ and the likes, but I find myself only using the play, pause and skip options of any media player anyway.

long_b

Doesn't seem to be refreshing recently uploaded tracks ?
If I toggle the Sync Music under "Accounts & Syncing" and restart the app they show up, but otherwise they don't seem to be syncing ?

srsly78

I also am a Grooveshark VIP member, however last year they made it MONO only over mobile. So now it's rubbish. Also it didn't work at all for several months. It's great on the desktop tho.

Google Music just appeared for me today, seems good so far. Also got Google Books, which is like Kindlel

BionicRasher

Just started using this last night - works great and I love the web interface and the fact that I can play all my music at work (on the earphones of course:))

Only thing I found was that uploading takes an age - I have only uploaded about 40 songs so far (4500 more to go !!) - I will just let it run over night for the next while

Can anyone figure out where the cache is stored - looks like my SD card has dramatically filled up since I started using it - dropped from about 250mb free to less than 100. Thats not good if I start uploading all my songs and end up having to get a bigger SD card to cope

28064212

tui0hcg wrote: »

Can anyone figure out where the cache is stored - looks like my SD card has dramatically filled up since I started using it - dropped from about 250mb free to less than 100. Thats not good if I start uploading all my songs and end up having to get a bigger SD card to cope

The cache is stored on the SD card: /Android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music. Songs are only downloaded if you play them or mark them to be available offline. I don't know if there's any way to limit the size of the cache though

BionicRasher

Some pretty good free music came with the app too

All good so far - looking forward to using this a fair bit - good on ya Google

BeciMester

Erm, educate me lads, what good a cloud service is if it takes up space on the card as well? How is it better than just copying my mp3's onto the card and NOT wasting time and bandwidth? Just to be able to say 'I store my music in the cloud'? I genuinely thought that the whole point of streaming was saving local storage space... This is not a trolling attempt, I honestly want to know the benefits please.

28064212

BeciMester wrote: »

Erm, educate me lads, what good a cloud service is if it takes up space on the card as well? How is it better than just copying my mp3's onto the card and NOT wasting time and bandwidth? Just to be able to say 'I store my music in the cloud'? I genuinely thought that the whole point of streaming was saving local storage space... This is not a trolling attempt, I honestly want to know the benefits please.

It's a cache. It's volatile, it changes on demand. You might as well ask what the point of a cache in a web-browser is. For example, if you watch a Youtube video in Firefox, that video is downloaded to the cache on your machine, and will stay there til it's overwritten by newer data

The only question that still remains to be answered (I don't have the app yet) is whether the user can limit the size of the cache

BeciMester

I think my question was aimed more at the benefits of cloud storage. I'd better open a new thread I guess.

28064212

BeciMester wrote: »

I think my question was aimed more at the benefits of cloud storage. I'd better open a new thread I guess.

? A cache will always be a fraction of the data that's stored in the cloud, that is the benefit

BionicRasher

Uploading like mad over the past few days and collection is beginning to build up nicely.:D
However when I look in my Google account details I see the following

Playable tracks 1120 tracks
Most recent: The Mad Lady and Me at 12:10
Total tracks 2193 tracks
Playlists 1 playlist

How come I only have 1120 playable tracks and the total is 2193? Is this DRM or something like that? I have always set my CD rips to be not protected when I rip them to my PC.

Also it seems like this is not counting against my storage plan with Google, I have 20GB Plan, and its remained the same over the past 2 days at 10.6GB used even though I have uploaded a lot of songs

Not sure about the cache size on the phone yet as I haven't really used it much on the phone

long_b

tui0hcg wrote: »

Uploading like mad over the past few days and collection is beginning to build up nicely.:D
However when I look in my Google account details I see the following

Playable tracks 1120 tracks
Most recent: The Mad Lady and Me at 12:10
Total tracks 2193 tracks
Playlists 1 playlist

You got a link for that page ?
On the music.google.com site, under settings, I just get
Songs in library 921 (20,000 MAX)

Goodshape

28064212 wrote: »

The only question that still remains to be answered (I don't have the app yet) is whether the user can limit the size of the cache

I don't see an option for it in the app actually :-/. It's just cache on or off, no limit setting.


Instructions for installing Music 3.0 on a rooted HTC Desire (might work for other phones, not sure) are here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=14423402#post14423402

...even aside from streaming and cloud support, it's a big improvement.

BionicRasher

long_b wrote: »

You got a link for that page ?
On the music.google.com site, under settings, I just get
Songs in library 921 (20,000 MAX)

Ya
if you go to any Google page you are logged in to (e.g. in Google Music or Gmail etc) and
click on Account Settings (normally top right of the page)
Then you should see the following

Dashboard View data stored with this account

In there you will see all sorts of stuff associated with your account

BionicRasher

OK - Upload for today is complete and now my account shows

Playable tracks 2191 tracks

I see that 2 tracks failed to upload due to some error and the upload tool shows you the names of these tracks so I can retry them again.

Looks like my details from earlier were just that the uploader found 2193 tracks on my drive and at that particular time only 1120 were playable as that was the number that had completed the upload

panic over
Loving this so far - real user friendly on the web and loads of space for songs and the phone app isn't bad also - just needs a decent widget

FastFullBack

How long did you guys have to wait for the invite? Requested an invite last week through US VPN. Still waiting for invite?

long_b

A few weeks for mine IIRC
Does anyone know if the failed uploads are automatically retried at a later date ?

Mezcita

Has anyone got an idea of how much data this app uses assuming your are not connected to wireless?

Goodshape

FastFullBack wrote: »

How long did you guys have to wait for the invite? Requested an invite last week through US VPN. Still waiting for invite?

I registered the day or day after it was announced, on May 10th iirc.

My activation email is dated June 1st.

long_b

Mezcita wrote: »

Has anyone got an idea of how much data this app uses assuming your are not connected to wireless?

Good question !
Found some info
http://mobile.informationweek.com/10996/show/e6165f02d4e45148f914923563954da9/

Music is streamed back to users at whatever bit rate the files are encoded with, though it supports an upper limit of 320 Kbps. That means .WAV files won't be played back at the full 1440 Kbps. Amazon's Cloud Drive also streams music files back at the native bit rate. Google says, however, that it will dynamically manage the bit rate depending on the network conditions.

mickoneill30

Goodshape wrote: »

I registered the day or day after it was announced, on May 10th iirc.

My activation email is dated June 1st.

I registered on Wednesday (after reading this thread) using a US proxy. I got my invite that night so they may not have any backlog.

FastFullBack

FastFullBack wrote: »

How long did you guys have to wait for the invite? Requested an invite last week through US VPN. Still waiting for invite?

Just got my invite overnight. Registered last Friday, so a 1 week wait.

Dardania

Has anyone signed up with a google apps account? I fear my .ie google apps domain name may be a stumbling block, but don't want to use my gmail account on my android phone...

Baron Floyd

WooHoo! requested it last night and got my invite this morning, loving the web interface, yet to see if the app will be available on the phone...

FastFullBack

amatheum wrote: »

WooHoo! requested it last night and got my invite this morning, loving the web interface, yet to see if the app will be available on the phone...

Use Market Enabler to fake your SIM as US and the App then appears in the Market.

mickoneill30

Does anybody know how to stop the Android version of this from scanning every folder on your phone. I've audio books and podcasts that I don't want to appear in my music app but they're all showing up.

Dimithy

mickoneill30 wrote: »

Does anybody know how to stop the Android version of this from scanning every folder on your phone. I've audio books and podcasts that I don't want to appear in my music app but they're all showing up.

Its easy enough actually, you just need to create a file called '.nomedia' in the folders where your audiobooks, and podcasts are.
This link explains how
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=751339

BionicRasher

How long did you guys have to wait for the invite? Requested an invite last week through US VPN. Still waiting for invite?

Signed up on the day it was announced and only got invite a few days ago
Looks like it is random enough as to who and when you get an invite

WooHoo! requested it last night and got my invite this morning, loving the web interface, yet to see if the app will be available on the phone...

Have a look here at post #262 it has the apk
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1072655&highlight=google+music&page=27

Its easy enough actually, you just need to create a file called '.nomedia' in the folders where your audiobooks, and podcasts are.

Will this also tell your podcast player that the folder has no media in it and stop the player finding the files? I tried this before with a few folders containing wallpapers and it stopped my wallpaper switcher app from finding the files

Does anyone know if the failed uploads are automatically retried at a later date ?

I have 10 failed files out of 6125 so not a bad failure rate - however they are still showing as failed and dont seem to have been rescanned

Another question is that I have some music on a portable drive that is not always attached to my PC - if I ask the app to scan that drive and it uploads the files to the cloud I presume once I unplug the drive my uploads wont disappear as the drive being scanned is no longer available? Am i making sense?

Cormic

I signed up for an invite on the day it was announced (via a US proxy) and only got my invite on the 6th of June. I had totally forgotten about the service until I saw this thread.

I have downloaded the software and am uploading my files now.

Goodshape

Dardania wrote: »

Has anyone signed up with a google apps account? I fear my .ie google apps domain name may be a stumbling block, but don't want to use my gmail account on my android phone...

I have a Google Apps account with a .ie address. Works fine.

long_b

Apparently this is supposed to be able to play tunes on iOS5 via the Safari browser ? Looks like it's playing OK but no sound ? iPhone 4 on Meteor

Dardania

FastFullBack wrote: »

Use Market Enabler to fake your SIM as US and the App then appears in the Market.

Getting problems with this app on a stock HTC Desire S 2.3.3 - any pointers on how to run it?

BionicRasher

Dardania wrote: »

Getting problems with this app on a stock HTC Desire S 2.3.3 - any pointers on how to run it?

What kind of problems?

Dardania

tui0hcg wrote: »

What kind of problems?

When I try to fake the provider, it tells me "We Got a Problem Houston:("

Doesn't seem to be any clear reasons why online...

FastFullBack

Dardania wrote: »

When I try to fake the provider, it tells me "We Got a Problem Houston:("

Doesn't seem to be any clear reasons why online...

Is your phone rooted? It may need to be for market enabler to work.