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."

Re:Just what market needed...

[CmdrPony]

Why would I use this when I can use Spotify? For that matter, Google Music doesn't even work outside US, which is incredibly stupid as it is your own collection of music, not some streaming service.

Re:US Only :-(

[Anonymous Coward]

bittorrent

Re:Just what market needed...

[MikeyO]

Because spotify costs money (I either have to pay a monthly fee, or I have to buy a copy of windows or a mac or so). They say [spotify.com] this is because they haven't figured out how to display ads on linux yet. Oh and you can't store music locally on linux. This doesn't doesn't sound like the type of software I'm psyched to pay for. Oh even though I might be paying for a "premium" account. It would be unsupported...

Have YOU used iTunes lately?

[SuperKendall]

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?

Re:Gee, that's nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, in fact they will. Artists can upload their own music and sell it.

Re:US Only :-(

[Phurge]

I'm in Australia, but access the internet at work via US servers. Just tried to buy music through Google Music - but it requires a US credit card. My Australian and UK credit cards didn't work.....

Re:Only in the U.S.

[Phurge]

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?

Hear Hear. When will the music industry wake up?

Re:Copy-and-Paste

[PNutts]

iTunes requires a horribly bloated app installed on your computer and clunky syncing of music between said computer and your iOS device.
Google music needs none of this (with the exception of a small app to upload your music you already have to the cloud).

It's not really a comparison you can make. iTunes does more than upload music into the cloud so I'm not sure how you arrived at "bloated". I'd list everything it could do but I'd sound like a cheerleader and I'm not sure it would make a difference. I'll just leave it at it's a dessert topping and a floor wax.

Re:Oh I see

[oakgrove]

Google Music does not require money to store 20,000 of your own songs and stream them on any computer or Android phone/tablet you have handy. I'd say that's quite a deal.

Re:99 cents an album!

[larry bagina]

That would be a success, but it's actually $0.99 - $1.29 per song.

Re:The way they'll kill the dinosaurs

[grouchomarxist]

Apple also takes %30, but they don't have a system for indie musicians.

Re:Just what market needed...

[moronoxyd]

Google Music doesn't even work outside US, which is incredibly stupid as it is your own collection of music, not some streaming service.

I'm German, living in Germany and guess what?
I have Google Music on my Android phone... AND IT IS WORKING!!!
The web interface too.

Sure, I probably can not buy music via Google Music, but I don't need to. There are enough channels to get my music from.

Oh, and Spotify isn't available everywhere as well. And you seem to need a Facebook account, which I don't have nor want.

Re:The way they'll kill the dinosaurs

[Celarent Darii]

Not true, anyone can sell their music on itunes. Takes some doing, but it's not that hard. Would probably recommend a service do it for you however, like this
article states:

http://www.garagespin.com/2009/03/09/7-ways-sell-your-music-on-itunes/

Re:Just what market needed...

[xaxa]

Assuming you have some space on your computer to store the transcoded files, I wrote a Makefile to transcode music to solve this. I can't access it right now, but I use a very similar Makefile for keeping all my photographs (at low resolution) on the phone, which is really useful for annoying people with holiday snapshots. I just changed it to work with music files.

~/.toPhone/Source/ (symlink to my photos)
~/.toPhone/Albums/ (this is rsynced to my phone with rsync for Android [android.com])
~/.toPhone/Makefile

PHOTOS = $(shell find -L Source/ -type f -name '*.jpg')

SHRUNK = $(patsubst Source/%.jpg, Albums/%.jpg, $(PHOTOS))

PNGS = $(shell find -L Source/ -type f -name '*.png')
SHRPNG = $(patsubst Source/%.png, Albums/%.jpeg, $(PNGS)) .PHONY: all
all: $(SHRUNK) $(SHRPNG)

Albums/%.jpg: Source/%.jpg
                @mkdir -p "$(@D)"
                convert "$<" -resize '800x800>' -quality 40 "$@"
                @touch -r "$<" "$@"

Albums/%.jpeg: Source/%.png
                @mkdir -p "$(@D)"
                convert "$<" -resize '800x800>' -quality 40 "$@"
                @touch -r "$<" "$@"

Then it's just:
nice -n 20 make -j 4

Re:Just what market needed...

[thetoadwarrior]

No you don't. It works fine without one. That's how I use it. It would like you to link to your FB account but it's not necessary.