Google Play: Music

[theexcitableboy]

I may be a little late on the bandwagon here, but has anyone seen the new Music service from Google? It lets you upload all your music to the cloud, so it is available anywhere, whenever you want it. You can play from iOS devices as well as Android devices.

I was initially worrried about size restrictions, but it seems to be uploading my 15,000 strong library without a hitch. Not so sure on quality though, I would assume it's all being reencoded to 128kbps. It reencodes to 320kbps mp3.

You can set it to scan a folder for upload, or scan an iTunes/WMP library and upload automatically.

I think it's probably more useful than iTunes Match since it allows a little more freedom (as with anything non-Apple)

https://play.google.com/music

Joseph

 

[daveh75]

It transcodes flac, ogg and aac to 320k mp3. Doesn't support alac, aiff or wav.

 

[theexcitableboy]

I've read it converts to 320kbps mp3. With ALAC going open-source, I imagine it will support uploading and converting of ALAC files soon. Of all the cloud-based music sites I've tried, it seems the most intuitive, after all it has the biggest budget (being a Google venture).

A shame it won't store lossless, but then it's intended for travellers/those with portable devices who wouldn't gain anything from playing lossless anyway (not to mention not having enough bandwidth). It's great for me at work, don't have to bring my iPod and worry about syncing it/battery issues etc, I just open Google Music on the web browser

 

[SteveR750]

So it's not a jike box, in th syle of Spotify?

I noticed the service when uploading some app updates the other day but didnt read up on it at the time. I'm really disappointed with Spotify, new phone means none of my playlists sync at all now, so one of the two big benefits of premium has been denied.