Google Music Beta Hands-On
Released few months ago, just yesterday I received the invitation to join the service of Google Music, a music cloud locker for the music you have from your desktop/laptop.
Google Music is fairly simple and lacks of many innovations seen recently, in particular with Apple Music matching in iCloud offerings.
Once registered, the service lets users upload and store their music collection (from iTunes, My Music folder,…) online and stream to the computer and android devices via the Music Manager utility.
From the Music Manager, you can:
- Add music from your iTunes library, Windows Media Player library, My Music folder, or folders of your choosing to Music Beta
- Choose to add songs automatically, on a specified interval, or completely manually
- Adjust the bandwidth available for adding songs
- View the progress of songs you’re adding
The Music Manager
- Mac OS X 10.5 and above
- Windows XP and above
- Linux (Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/openSUSE)
The upload might take days.. for few thousand songs. But user can start playing back quickly from the Web interface or the Android phone.
The service allows playback and sync your music and playlist across devices. You can use a feature called Instant Mix to create a playlist of similar songs. The service cache your most recently played music on your device for offline playback.
The Music Beta player on your computer
- Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 7 and above
- JavaScript must be enabled in your browser (not necessary for Google Chrome).
- The latest version of Adobe Flash Player must be installed and enabled in your browser
The Music Beta player for Android devices
Your device must be running Android 2.2 and above with OpenGL2.0 (contact your manufacturer to determine if OpenGL2.0 is supported on your device). You can determine your device’s version of Android by touching Settings > About Phone/Tablet.
The Music Beta player for IOS devices
Point your Safari to music.google.com/music/, enter Google credential and you can actually play back your song. I first could not get the audio to work, but after a reset, the problem is fixed. However the song selection is a little bit awkward. Tap (or double tap) on the song you want to play and tap on the arrow located on the right bottom corner of the song title for the drop down. Paging does not work, so you’d better search the song you want to play.
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