I managed to get invitations to a couple of new online music services – Google Music and Spotify.
Google Music is in beta. How Google Music works is, you upload your music files to “the cloud” and then you can access your music wherever you are from any mobile device or computer. Even if you’re offline the recently played songs will be available. You can also select songs you really like to always be available offline. You download the music manager to your computer that will then start the upload of your music once you tell it where the files are located. This happens in the background so unless you’ve got a very slow machine you really shouldn’t notice any difference in computer performance while this is happening.
The worst part about Google Music is the amount of time it takes to upload all your music, especially if you’ve got a lot. I believe the program told me it found about 14,000 files on my external hard drive. I’ve had access to this for about 6 days now and I’ve only got a fraction of my files uploaded, (about 2,000). Now, just to be fair, as I’ve said, my music files are on an external hard drive. I don’t always have it hooked up to my computer and I don’t always have my computer on. I’ve left it on and hooked up over the weekend to try and get this to finish more quickly. I’ve noticed that any files with embedded DRM will NOT upload. So, not ALL your music will be available. Once a number of files are uploaded though you can get access pretty quickly on a mobile device and start listening. I’ve installed the app on my Android phone and I’ve created a playlist and I’ve been listening since this past weekend. As long as you’ve got a strong signal, the songs play seamlessly. Making playlists is very simple through the phone app. Just press and hold the song listing, a menu will pop up, pick “add to playlist” and then either create a new playlist or select one already created. Any playlists you create on your phone/mobile device will show up when you log in on a computer. The web interface is simple to use as well. Just click the plus sign next to playlist, name it and then go to your list of music and select the songs you want to add through the little menu square.
Google Music is currently free, but again, it’s in beta and you need an invitation. When I heard about Google Music I searched for it and requested an invite through the website, I got one within a week. As far as I can tell Google Music does not have it’s own library of music to show you new artists or let you stream music you don’t already own. This service is strictly for your personal music library.
The other new music service on the internets is Spotify. Spotify has been around in Europe and it is just starting up in the US. The free version is only available by invitation, but if you’ve got a Klout account they’re offering up invites. I asked for an invite at the Spotify website when I first heard of it and I got one within a few days of asking. Although by that time I had already signed up using the Klout code I received. If you want to pay for one of their premium services you can get in immediately. I haven’t played around much with Spotify yet but I did download the player to my computer. It looks and feels a lot like iTunes. However, on the free version there are giant ads that block some of what I need to see on my tiny netbook screen and there’s no intuitive way to adjust the size or move things around. The online player for Google Music has no ads. I was able to listen to songs in the Spotify library immediately including the new Duran Duran song and a couple others that they suggested to me. Once you tell it where your music files are you can start listening immediately to your own library. Compared to Google Music this is much faster. It was a couple of days before the web interface of Google Music would let me even see that songs had uploaded (even though I could already access some of them with my phone.)
Premium members of Spotify can stream songs from the Spotify library on their phone, while the free or Unlimited users can only listen to their own music that Spotify recognizes and has a license for. This is very much like Google Music that wont upload files with DRM in them. It is possible you might have some tracks that Spotify doesn’t have a license for that you wont be able to stream on your phone… this blows if you ask me.
I’m not sure how either of these applications would handle any existing iTunes playlists since I haven’t bothered with iTunes for some time now. I’ve been without a good chunk of my music library after the crash of a desktop computer. I didn’t want to hook my iPod up to anything and risk losing all the music I have on it. Honestly I’m sick to death of the record labels and all of these services catering to their demands. Whatever happened to fair use? I’ve bought this music and I’ve taken the time to load it onto my machine. Why can’t I listen to it on ANY player I own or may own in the future? OK, no more ranting.
Why would you choose Spotify over Google Music? Well, if you want something to suggest new songs to you and let you listen to stuff you don’t own and maybe share playlists with friends then Spotify is for you. Keep in mind you can only share music that Spotify is licensed to share though. UPDATED TO ADD: You must have the PREMIUM account to listen to any music NOT ALREADY ON YOUR PHONE. You can not access your home library on your phone if you don’t have the premium account. It does give you the option to sync wirelessly to your music, but if I’m on my home wireless why would I want to listen on my phone? The computer is right there…
Why would you use Google Music over Spotify? If you only want access to your own library and maybe want some kind of online back up for all of it (I haven’t looked into using this as an online backup system for my music, but I’m thinking this would be a great way to backup my stuff ) if you own many computers and devices and want to be able to get your music no matter what machine you’re on, this would be ideal for you. Especially if you’ve got a LOT of music. Initial set up will take some time, but it could be worth it. Aside from the music manager to be able to upload songs to the cloud there is nothing to download. As long as you have access to the internet you can listen to your library wherever you are. Are you a freelancer? Want to listen to your stuff when working on-site? Use Google Music, just log in and everything is there for you to listen to and you don’t need admin rights to load a player. Do you travel a lot? Use a netbook without much drive space? As long as you can get to Google Music you can access your tunes! If you use Spotify you’ve got to download the player on EVERY COMPUTER you use in order to listen to anything.
I’m going to keep playing around with both of these to see which one I like best. If you’ve got an opinion I’d love to hear it!
