Google Begins Rolling Out Google Play Music Family Plan
techcrunch.com
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Yet another service not available to Google Hosted domains.
I run my own domain, happily pay for it, for 1TB of storage for Photos, for Google Play Music, for apps, for films.
But yet constantly excluded from some services and features, and never knowing whether some features will even come to my account.
Seemingly all because I wanted to keep the same email I've had since 1997.
They could easily add this capability, default disabled, to the domain management page.
Edit: Has anyone tried it the other way around? What if I associate my credit card to my wife's regular gmail account and get the family plan there, could we add accounts that belong to Google Hosted domains to a family created via gmail? Or is the definition of family purely gmail users?
Go to the Google Apps Admin Console (https://admin.google.com/AdminHome).
Navigate to Apps > Additional Google Services
You'll see a gray bar at the top of the screen ("Filter: Top featured services"). Click the "X" on the top right to disable that filter.
Scroll down to "Web History" and select "On for everyone."
Each user may then need to also enable Web History for his or her own account (https://www.google.com/settings/accounthistory/search).
No, it shouldn't be that hard, but, yes, that will work.
Not only are you likely to pay double for some things, there just awkwardness...
I.e. if you use Google Play Music in chrome on a desktop, it defaults to the first account you signed in with... Likely the hosted one. So then you have to change it, which means a ui dance and multiple sign-ins before you can press play on what you last listened to.
If you sign in first with gmail, then other services default to the first account and you get the dance accessing other stuff.
Not to mention multiple invoices, your card in a few places.
Or that my android TV uses my hosted account and has subscriptions, TV and film rights... And I'd lose that stuff, or if I keep using the hosted on that I'd not have integrated access to play as that would be on a different account.
My photos are on my hosted account too... We have a family tablet device, what account should be used for that? I'm using sync permissions currently to restrict it to media and not email.
Basically, by not supporting products on Google Hosted domains, lots of very shitty user experiences emerge.
For those on Google Hosted, the best experience open to us is to stay fully in one world.
There's a discussion on this going on over at Google's product forums [1]. Tons of people are in the same boat. These are some of the most devoted users of Google's products, yet are continually left frustrated and left out of new products for seemingly no apparent reason.
And no - migrating to a regular @gmail.com address isn't really feasible. I'd have to manually export all of my playlists, library, favorites from Play Music and countless other products.
[1] https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/play/86WVa8b_3i...
Project Fi is another service I'd love to sign up for, but my Google Voice number I've been using for years is associated with my Apps account, and I'm not about to start another number and start switching between Google accounts all the time just to use it.
I say this as someone who has used Apps in the past, but I've given up on it since.
I highly recommend abandoning your account. Use a real GMail account. There's a one time switching cost, and it's worth it.
I would have to migrate:
* Android app purchases.
* Android apps that use the Google account for identity.
* Data in Google Fit
* Data in Google Maps including reviews and ratings of restaurants and places visited (which I find useful when I re-visit a city)
* Data in Google Calendars
* Address that others use for Calendar invites
* Address that others use for Google Drive shared folders
* Google Drive data, including configuration of permissions on folder access
* Google Photos, including configuration of permissions. These are photos going back to 1996, 100k+ photos.
* Browser sync
* Browser stored data, passwords and autofill
* Android backup
* Google Keep
* Group memberships
* Group ownerships, and somehow move those groups
* YouTube videos uploaded, and preferences
* Android TV apps and configuration
All of that, is just what I have on my Google Account that is on a Google Hosted domain.
And even if it were possible to somehow migrate that... I would most definitely lose all of the history that so much of that represents. i.e. Google Fit history, Maps Timeline history and so on.
Others may have it worse than I, I haven't got anything in Google+.
All of this works, and it works really well. It's a great offering, and I'm a much happier consumer paying for this than not.
But... it's silo'd. Even intra-family every one of us has our own account.
We were really hoping that Google Hosted gave us a path to treat our family as an organisation and to share within... but that's not how it's panned out.
So we've been hoping that Play Music for Families represents the ability to create a shared group for the family, just a group with a couple of accounts, and these can share stuff. Starting with Music, but hopefully eventually reaching Photos, TV, Video, etc.
Instead it does look like the definition of "Family" is "Gmail accounts", not "a small group of immediately related individuals"... and in that latter definition, who cares whether an individual has a Google Hosted account?
About 90% of things I use email + password (and 2FA where available), but that last 10% is a mix of Google authenticated, or Twitter authenticated.
Because Google Accounts are an identity provider, even if I wanted to move I really have no way to do that now.
It's worse than that: I think it's actually impossible to move ownership of Google docs/sheets/slides/etc from a hosted account to a gmail account and vice versa. Also impossible to transfer ownership between two hosted accounts. You can only transfer ownership between accounts in the same domain.
Ran into this problem in a big way when my company's domain name changed and we were trying to migrate.
All the solutions I found involved giving all your data to a third party. Or some complicated export/import conversion through MS-formatted equivalents.
So even after a year on the new domain now, every so often I need to log back in to the old account just to get something from Drive.
Google is an advertising company. This Apps thing is a side business. They're going to focus on bringing features to the users they are selling ads against. Users who aren't generating ads are going to be an afterthought.
You can argue that they should pay you more attention if you are paying for the Google services but as a practical matter this company is focused on ads, not on satisfying paying customers.
Play Music for Families is paid for, and advert free.
Your argument does not apply to this product.
I have tried Spotify and Amazon and others. Google has two killer features.
1) I can upload my own music (20,000 songs) for free and stream for free. I have eclectic taste and some of my music isn't in the 35 million songs available.
2) The YouTube (Red (no ads), Music and Gaming) really are great on mobile.
That has been upped to 50,000 songs early this year, FYI. As an Enka and J-Pop listener, it's the defining feature for me too.
"You can only set up a family group with a personal Google Account, not a Google for Work or Google for Education account"
By now, many of us have app and content purchases tied to those accounts, and migrating from Gmail/Drive/Photos isn't practical, so we're stuck getting new Google features later or never.
The only good way to use a custom domain with Google is to pay. Clearly a lot of us are happy doing so. I know I pay around £200 per year to Google for my one account, the storage and media subscriptions (music, magazines, etc)... But for this I get incomplete features (Now) and locked out of some services (Play Family).
Anecdotally - I was a longtime Rdio user, from beta until they recently closed. I did the trial of Google Play Music and it's not only the best good product I've ever used, but I have already gifted 6 months to my sister. Christmas is coming up, and I'm tempted to gift it again to other people.
If you enjoy music and haven't checked out Google Play Music, I'd encourage you to give it a shot. So far it's everything I've wanted plus more!
I use (paid) Google Apps for personal & family stuff - and this seems like a pretty arbitrary restriction on Play Music.
Knowingly profiting from crimes is still illegal, so you might be liable, too.
If you can’t prove that you told Google that you are a private person using a business account, you might end up having to repay and end up with a fine.
I'm using Google Apps actually but I don't expect Google allow me to share my account with my family.
And even if, as you say, it is "for work", why does Google force that decision upon me, the owner/operator/admin/sole employee of my one man organization? Why can't it just be a check box that says "I really just want a custom domain. Please let me use the cool things you make"?
It's infuriating. I have no problem paying $5/month just for a custom domain on a standard Gmail account, but it's not possible. This is the only other option, and if I had known how much frustration it would cause I'd never have used my Apps account as my primary for the past years as I now have numerous purchases, domains, email archives, photos, and so on attached to it.
Probably because it's not just a matter of marking it enabled. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if they used two separated branches of the codebase, only merging features from regular services into Apps after they are more stable.
This reason made me to create new gmail account in order to use Project Fi. I really don't understand why Google releases product for gmail user only. They advertised google apps for work as custom domain at first.
Is it to legitimize previous tech endeavors to make sure they're sustainable in the long term? Does Google forecast subscription services will make up a sizable portion of revenue in the future? Is the experience better at Google than anywhere else due to the vast amount of data and new technology being created everyday?
I'm not sure I totally get it yet because the revenue Google stands to capture in these markets feels incremental compared to their main advertising and marketing businesses.
Haven't their revenues been going up despite the CPC going down?
Their entire strategy up until these new paid-for services predicated on giving people free services (Gmail, Docs, search) under the assumption they could pay for the development and support with ads.
It seems like they're shifting to a model seen by open source software creators - free to use, but any extra features or support will cost extra.
Note, 1B users today in 2015. Still growing at 40% according to their stats page. Pretty decent math.
But by claiming Google will hit 100M users paying $10 per month seems lofty unless there's something really unique about an ad free Youtube experience. Netflix has under 40M subscribers paying ~$8 per month right now.
There is: Google Music is bundled with it. That was enough to switch me over to it after 3+ years as a Spotify Premium subscriber.
For me, the YouTube benefits are an excellent cherry on top of a service I was already paying for before.
Netflix doesn't bundle something equivalent to Google Play Music All Access with their streaming video service, and doesn't have an free, advertising-support tier with a billion users as an onramp to the paid service.
Also, Youtube has a different model for acquiring content, and a greater diversity in kinds of content. Which might give it a broader natural market than Netflix has.
The problem with google music (or google in general) is that they can't just be happy with an UI, and so their UI changes constantly which make it for a poor user experience. Plus, I can't just give my spouse my account because that means I am giving all of my google services accounts.
It's better than the price for Spotify, at least.
Ad-free YouTube music fills in any gaps. The only thing really lacking is niche music like Immediate Music's back catalogue (since they aren't working with a major record label).
The hilarious thing is their Wikipedia scraping. Every time I select an artist I'm treated to some lame-style photo, and half the screen gets to tell me "Nirvana was a grunge band from Aberdeen with Kurt.....". Gee thanks Google, that was worth complicating the UI.
Playlist management is also worse than Windows Media Player. Like, how do you get that wrong?
This deal is sweet and I'd buy today, but Google is psycho when it comes to regions. Since it randomly thinks I'm in France or Hungary when in Denver, plus I travel between Canada and Guatemala, my guess is that features will randomly stop working or switch language. Otherwise, cool.
Apple Music has better artist descriptions and artwork - and I like that they and Spotify display the full album cover when playing on mobile. Apple's focus on hip-hop and pop though really hurts discovery and UX for those without those focuses.
I need to give Google Music a try. Spotify has been really frustrating me with its inability to remember last-played position consistently. Working with large playlists on the go sucks. But with Apple Music, I felt less of a need to create playlists. I created most playlists on Spotify because I had to.
(It's really annoying in a car. I pull over, but I wanna be fast. Google Now is hit or miss if it'll properly play. Sometimes it just searches. Sometimes it plays off of YouTube. Etc. You'd think by now they could get this basic flow down, without harming their neato stuff I don't want.)
Maybe I haven't had enough coffee this morning?
That’s most definitely "contributing to discussion".
I agree with you about the tone, though.
So it may be true that Spotify has a family plan, it's not available to all their subscribers. The situation is a bit similar to Google Hosted Domains customers who can't get a Google Play Music Family Plan: unnecessary complicated terms and conditions and exclusions.
Although I do enjoy signing up to the 3-month 99p deals and moving over my playlists each time.
I view streaming as a convenience, and not as an approach that requires one to forgo having a DRM-free backup.
Well, they don't want you to be able to permanently download the files. If you cancel your subscription you'll lose whatever you have downloaded. Offering you a file you can easily convert into a different format would break that pretty comprehensively.
And why is that exactly?
> Well, they don't want you to be able to permanently download the files.
Not sure what they gain by it. I prefer to buy and keep what I bought. Not really interested in renting digital goods. That's why I'm not using Google Play and similar stores for music. Bandcamp offers DRM-free music in FLAC for example, and there once you buy it - you keep it.
Because it is a streaming service, not a download service.
I prefer to buy and keep what I bought. Not really interested in renting digital goods.
Then don't use a streaming service.
Why can't they offer both? For instance Bandcamp does. You can stream music if you don't want to download it, but you can as well back up your DRM-free copy which I always do. I only pay for music when such option is available.
> Then don't use a streaming service.
I see no correlation between streaming (convenience) and forbidding one to download what is streamed (DRM). I'm OK with first, but I'm not OK with second.
But streaming isn't convenience, it's the business model. At no point do you buy any albums, you merely rent them while you listen to them. Otherwise you could subscribe for one month and download every single piece of music you can within 30 days, then cancel. That's pretty obviously not how the system is designed to be used.
For me it's convenience.
> At no point do you buy any albums, you merely rent them while you listen to them.
I don't really understand the concept of renting for digital goods. Since they can be duplicated practically at no cost, there is no practical reason to "take and return" approach (i.e. rent). Keeping your digital copy does not reduce any value for the service.
> Otherwise you could subscribe for one month and download every single piece of music you can within 30 days, then cancel
That can easily be prevented by saying that you can't exceed certain limit of downloads for such service if you only pay per month, and not for each copy. But again, I see no reason why they can't offer an option to pay per copy and let you keep one.
Of course it does. If you listen to an album a lot, it would either cost you a one-off payment $9.99 to download it once during your subscription, or, if you can't download it, you'll have to pay $9.99 every month in order to listen to it.
Allowing users to download music permanently would absolutely affect the profit Google would make - let alone how difficult it would make their negotiations with major labels.
Renting makes sense when resources are limited, like with physical goods. Returning it removes the need to produce another one, and it also naturally makes renting prices lower. With digital goods it's artificial - there is no scarcity that should require returning it after usage. Making one return it and pay over and over for unlimited resource is simply a rip off.
Not necessarily. I might listen to one album very frequently, but also other albums, including new ones as they come out. In that case, I'll be paying $9.99 for streaming no matter what, so there's no need to buy the album.
Making one return it and pay over and over for unlimited resource is simply a rip off.
Yeah, it's a business. It's the entire model of the business. If you don't like it you are welcome to not use it.
I prefer to always have backup of what I buy. I don't want my digital library to disappear because some DRMed service will go bust tomorrow (and that happened quite a number of times already with various services in the past). It's one of the reasons I don't use such digital renting services.
> Yeah, it's a business. It's the entire model of the business. If you don't like it you are welcome to not use it.
Indeed I don't :) In general digitial renting is aimed at reducing ownership. It started with crazy EULAs, DRM and other nonsense "business models" that some "smart" suits devised just because they dealt with digitial and not physical things. So I support those who distribute DRM-free (whether it's music, books, games, video and etc.). It's a form of voting with one's wallet as well.
> And why is that exactly?
As untog says: "Because it is a streaming service, not a download service."
People make a fair bit of money on software and services that attempt (with varying degrees of success) to automate music industry billing. Music industry billing is complicated because music industry licensing is (needlessly) complicated.
Streaming services typically have substantially different royalty rates than services that make it easy to save a copy of a given audio file. What's more, the license is very likely to have reporting requirements attached to it, along with different rates for partial plays and the like. These rates and reporting requirements may vary wildly from song to song and from album to album.
Have you ever wondered why there isn't one audio and one video streaming site that has everything that rightsholders are willing to have streamed on the Internet?
It's because
* The Big Music and Hollywood rightsholders aren't in this to make things easy for you. They're in this to make shitloads of cash.
* As Big Music learned from Apple, permitting a single entity to distribute pretty much all of your product substantially reduces Big Media's negotiating power. [0] This means that Big Media makes less money and... refer back to point #1.
[0] Being able to credibly threaten to remove something from the catalog, or be a gigantic ass and demand substantially more money for an entire album, rather than "most of the album, except for those couple of songs that are really good" helps to keep their rates high.
I indeed wondered about that :) All those release limitations always looked stupid to me.
> The Big Music and Hollywood rightsholders aren't in this to make things easy for you. They're in this to make shitloads of cash.
They are just blind with their thirst for control, which outweighs their thirst for money. They are losing money on making things harder for their users. For instance DRM means lost sales for them. Same goes for fractured releases and poor availability of what they offer. They might gain some power to tell who can get what, where and when, while in practice they reduce reach of what they make which means less profit.
Avoiding too much distributor's leverage can be an issue if there is only one distributor or some collusion between them. If there is healthy competition, they can always ditch one and chose a competitor which balances this issue. In a healthy market, creators should distribute all their content through all available distributors.
> If there is healthy competition, they can always ditch one and chose a competitor which balances this issue. In a healthy market, creators should distribute all their content through all available distributors.
Perhaps my brain is poisoned by looking at this through the eyes of Big Media. How would this work? Remember a few things:
* There really aren't that many companies in Big Media, but they've managed to amass quite a lot of power, and influence, and a fair bit of money.
* If all media that is made available is made available through all channels at the same wholesale price, then retail sellers can only distinguish themselves through ease of use, lower overhead (which enables lower retail price), or other "value-adding" things like social networking integration.
What's to prevent the five or ten real media distribution heavyweights that would inevitably emerge from doing the very same thing that Big Media currently does to everyone: using strong-arm tactics and back-room collusion to keep Big Media weak and in a position where the distributors set the price?
And I don't understand why they wouldn't to make more. Removing all those pesky restrictions would just give them even more sales than they already get. All I can guess is like I said above - they value control over reach and profit (calling them control freaks was very appropriate ;)).
> Perhaps my brain is poisoned by looking at this through the eyes of Big Media. How would this work?
I'm looking at it simply from perspective of potential creator. Most of the time I personally don't care about "big media" and its dull commercial mass market art. But going back to creators - for me it seems pretty simple. Let's say someone wrote music, a book or made a film or computer game or whatever other artistic work. They need to break even and profit to be able to create more art. So, the way the do it is by reaching as many people as possible, right? And distributors come in play and help them to increase that reach. The more distributors they use, the more potential people they'll reach. Any kind of exclusives would mean lower reach for them. Pretty straightforward, no?
> If all media that is made available is made available through all channels at the same wholesale price, then retail sellers can only distinguish themselves through ease of use, lower overhead (which enables lower retail price), or other "value-adding" things like social networking integration.
Distributors can compete on features like you said. Exclusives of course give them an advantage, but only they benefit. It hurts both creators and people who are forced to use certain distributor to get what they want. For instance, many computer games (which is probably one of the most successful art forms for independent creators today) are released through as many distributors as possible, obviously to increase reach.
> What's to prevent the five or ten real media distribution heavyweights that would inevitably emerge from doing the very same thing that Big Media currently does to everyone: using strong-arm tactics and back-room collusion to keep Big Media weak and in a position where the distributors set the price?
Good question. In theory competition + anti-trust laws should prevent that. Collusion and price fixing are really illegal. But if competition is strong, they won't be interested in doing it anyway. In practice I agree that anti-trust laws are rarely enforced, and bad players manipulate the market way too often.
In the long run, the industry as a whole might make more money, but it's certain that each individual company wouldn't.
As you say, investigations into collusion and price fixing are substantially more rare than they should be. If Big Media loses the ability to refuse to grant parts of their catalog to one distributor or another, enough distributors to matter can easily band together to force reductions in media licensing fees.
> I'm looking at it simply from perspective of potential creator.
Ah. Well, that (in all seriousness) is a useful and valid conversation to have, but you asked why a site that streamed media controlled by Big Media wouldn't do the obvious thing and let you download what you stream. The answer is that Big Media won't let them; sometimes under any circumstances, other times unless the site pays a lot more than they pay for just streaming rights.
I agree that the state of Big Media's licensing regime is really rather bad for society overall, but it's fantastically good for Big Media.