Google Music Service | Hacker News Reader

Google Music Service

music.google.com

70 pointsjoao90 comments

From the screenshot, it looks even less useful than Amazon's player.

You have to upload all of your own music yourself, which would take forever for anyone who has a collection big enough that they can't carry on their phone or ipod. Also, there is absolutely no conceivable benefit to musicians. At least amazon allows you to easily buy albums.

There doesn't appear to be any useful additional functionality either. Social interaction, concert ticket listings, artist info, last.fm tag data, lyrics and all the other things I'd want from a google music service don't look like they're going to be available.

I agree .. when i had my music collection saved/backed up on 3 different hard-drives which all crashed I had 5,000 songs. Overall that would take me way to long to upload and manage!

These days Pandora, YouTube and Vevo on my iPhone or other computing devices provides me with a better experience; free, instant access wherever, no worries about hard drive crashing & no need to upload/manage tons and tons of songs...

I think you forget the core value: listen to your music everywhere.

That isn't compelling?

It is, and that's exactly what I used to do with a Linux box running as a dedicated jukebox for both my home stereo and for internet streaming. It was terrific.

Then I got an iPod.

Yes, that is quite a compelling feature, but I feel like there's nothing revolutionary about it. The non-technically-inclined have been using Grooveshark for a few years to do that, and nerds can just run their own streaming mp3 servers. I'm just a bit disappointed that there isn't any nice functionality like I mentioned above - this seems like just another cloud storage service with a decent and simple Flash interface on top.

http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

Has Android and iOS clients, and is also accessible via the web. It's not as clean and polished as I'd like, but it works reliably enough for my tastes and is fully open sourced.

Cool, I'll just upload all my music, turn on my car radio, and ... hey wait a minute.

1. Upload music. 2. Turn on car radio 3. Connect smartphone to car radio

This is what I do.

Now I just need my phone to auto-realize it's in the car and start playing music over Bluetooth or something to the car stereo. Too bad I have an iPhone - if I had an Android I'd be tempted to implement this myself.

You can use Tonido (http://www.tonido.com) to stream your home music collection.It has native mobile apps for iOS,Android, Blackberry and w7.

It's compelling, but it feels like catchup.

And I can't see why Google didn't go farther. Whatever Apple's rebranded MobileMe turns out to be, it's almost certainly going to be more ambitious than Google and Amazon's services. Google has to know that. I just don't see why they didn't really act on it.

> ...upload all of your own music yourself, which would take forever...

Does anyone know if they actually upload the files, or just upload if a hash of the file doesn't exist? I have a hard time believing that Google hasn't already thought of this. I imagine that less than 5% of your music actually has to go over the wire once google has a large collection of music on their servers.

I can't speak for Google, but Amazon doesn't do it. It took 41 hours to upload my collection (not counting podcasts, which for whatever absurd reason are not supported) to Cloud Player and I have a 15mbps fios connection. If I had a regular cable modem or whatever I probably wouldn't have bothered.

Whoa, that quiet ridiculous. Why wouldn't they hash/check the files before ? Is there any good reason ?

It's probably some sort of tactical play to keep the record labels from shutting them down.

You are probably right, though they should just call it "distributed hash compression technology for super-fast uploads", rather than "if we already have a copy of that song, it doesn't need to be re-uploaded".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_v._MP3.com

If you are interested in this problem but can't get into the beta yet, check out my app: http://www.audiogalaxy.com.

You have to leave your home computer running, but it is totally free, available outside of the US, and has both Android and iOS apps.

Do you have an API for your service?

We do. http://www.audiogalaxy.com/misc/developer

Oh my... did you guys (Audiogalaxy) have P2P file downloading waaay back in the day, like 2001-2002?

I want to say the first or second thing I was told by roommates to install when I booted up my first computer in college was an Audiogalaxy client.

Logo looks familiar... name sounds familiar... say it's so?

Yup, that is us. We were out of the music biz for a while (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/foldershare) but are back now with a slightly different business model.

Audiogalaxy doesn't support Linux natively. However, you can run it under Wine.

I'll give it a shot using Wine, but a real client would be so much better.

I think I've looked at this in the past, and it's almost exactly what I want, but I'd rather be able to have a service running on my computer and be able to have the associated app log directly into my computer without having to have an account with someone else. Does anyone know any system to do that?

We've had a lot of users have success with Audiogalaxy using this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/137890

I'm not sure what I was supposed to see in that link, but I already figured that Audiogalaxy ran as a service, and that's not the problem. To clarify, I meant that I want to be able to have an app (not necessarily Audiogalaxy, just something similar) where I can input an address for a service on my computer (IP:port or URL), and log in directly to the service without going through any other servers (except DNS) at any point in the process. Nothing against your product, it's just how I prefer to do things. I don't even mind that much having to make an account to download the software since it's still in beta; it's just that since the music is already being streamed directly from my computer I'd rather have authentication happen there as well. I realize that an average user probably doesn't care, but I do.

Ah, I understand now -- I misread your first post and thought you were talking about Windows accounts.

Looks like exactly what I would love to use, but do you have any plans to support Linux?

I would love to do a Linux version, but we just don't have the resources right now. At some point we will get it done, I just can't say when. However, it does run under wine -- email us at help@audiogalaxy.com if you have any problems setting it up.

I also recommend checking out Audiogalaxy. It works surprisingly well on 3G and is a great way to access your entire music/podcast collection from your phone. I use it all the time.

Audiogalaxy was the greatest thing!

I used to visit my local record shop every couple of weeks and walk out with a stack of CDs, almost all of which I would have first found on Audiogalaxy (running 24/7 on my Linux jukebox)

When the record industry shut down Audiogalaxy, that's when I stopped buy CDs from major labels. The boycott is still going strong.

We're sorry. Music Beta is currently only available in the United States

It bothers me when this happens... I end giving up to find proxies or other ways to reach the site.

Same here. This happen so often that I might consider renting a VPS in the US to use it as a proxy. I found some at $5/mo with 250GB/mo for bandwidth, I even think it's enough to share and pay only $2.5/mo...

For links to ~ $5 VPSs, see http://www.lowendbox.com/

That's what I did - I got a cheapest VPS for $5 so that I can stream stuff from Hulu/CrunchyRoll/and few other services.

Plus - it's always useful to have a VPS anyway.

Do you just port forward with SSH via -D? Or do you use some sort of VPN solution?

Yep what I would do is just `ssh -C -N -D <port> <host>` and then tell my browser to use the SOCKS proxy at localhost:<port>.

(BTW, -D create a SOCKS proxy, port fowarding is done using -L :-).)

Try http://grooveshark.com?

Why does this bother you?

Spotify doesn't work in the U.S... so I just don't use it. It's not like my life is that much harmed by it.

Requires Flash; no Linux manager available.

Where's the HTML5 love? :(

This is not what I thought they would be releasing at all. I was hoping that it would just introspect your personal music collection and allow you access to any track that it found that had a match in their music catalog. I really don't want to upload my entire music collection somewhere else as it would take forever and while it's free now there may be usage fees on transfer in the future.

i drool to what you thought they would be releasing.

EDIT: by drool i mean salivate. that certainly sounds like an amazing service.

The frustrating thing is that's how lala worked. The upside is that maybe possibly Apple will keep that feature for their version of it.

This would be great, but I don't think the music industry would in any way allow this. I think I just read something that they are trying to pressure Amazon into actually storing a copy of the same mp3 for every user which is using their cloud service in S3. This is their way of trying to cause pain to Amazon, in that they want a 'physical copy' of each media file for every user which has access to the tune.

One thing that I have been thinking about in relation to all these new streaming services coming out is that one thing that I am really keen on seeing is if the service will allow exporting of your listens, to last.fm for scrobling or just general export of listen analytics. I am hoping it is in the pipe line for Amazon & Google and whatever Apple delivers - however I am not holding my breath. I think google has the best shot of allowing the data captured out but for people like myself who really enjoying sending that info into other people's suggestion algos I hope with this new line of services I am not put in a box and forced to only use on the suggestion features of the provider (which usually only ends up being from record companies whom they have deals with). Don't fail me Google ;) !

Audiogalaxy scrobbles to Last.fm, FWIW

as does rdio.com (pure streaming service). One of the features I like about both.

Grooveshark scrobbles to Last.FM just like most other music apps. http://grooveshark.com

Note: music.google.cn is available in China for years now.

Can you explain very briefly what it does? The only part I can read is "Music streaming/download services are not available in your region"

Is it the same product they're rolling out in the US?

basically it allows you seach and listen to almost any music for free, with one click.

It is not the same. It is free for search, download and stream, and Google China actually has a deal with big Chinese Record Labels. But from what learned years ago, it cannot stream music to mobile devices.

> a deal with big Chinese Record Labels

Are you sure?

music.google.cn is cooperated with YaoMing's top100.cn, here is the list of labels

http://www.top100.cn/corparation/

Indian version: http://www.google.co.in/music It just lets you search and listen to songs.. doesn't let you store anything...

same with Google India. THey've had streaming music for a while

Is the service called "Music Beta"? Or is it just that the Music service is currently in a beta release?

The logo is pretty confusing with equal size given to both 'music' and 'beta'. While I'm excited to try the service, I find the logo a bit awkward and underwhelming.

Google has decided that music in general is still in the beta stage. I don't see them ever removing that label.

Looks like they're finally putting the Simplify Media technology to use. That was my favorite app on iPhone and I used it at work constantly too.

I would love for them to integrate podcasts with this. Google Listen is great, but is definitely showing its age.

The look and feel somehow looks inconsistent with other google products

I personally think this is a good thing. I think Google does a great job of getting utility out of their UX, and while this doesn't really do more than the utility of streaming music for the realm of competitors that it is venturing up against I think the more "non-google" it looks, the better. (Disclaimer: I have not used the android music marketplace, which I think might be closest to this area of design for Google of stuff they already had live).

Could you explain a little more? The web interface is just like the Android Market. The Android phone player is a different UI though.

I think that's precisely what parent comment is referencing; the Music design scheme may be familiar to Android users, but non-Android users likely see it as a bit surprising/inconsistent. Two quick examples: button styling and top account-bar background.

This is also somewhat revealing of how Google wants this app perceived. I see it as leaning _heavily_ toward a native experience on Android devices, and a push from that mobile experience into the browser. It's interesting.

Here's the help page that might provide some extra information: http://www.google.com/support/music/

The "about" page is also slightly more interesting: http://music.google.com/about/

This would be compelling with an iOS client. Until then...

Screenshots for those of us outside the US please!

I already requested an invite, but here is what the 'Thank you' page looks like: http://jhn.me/6ckz

Looks like it's currently just a beta signup page (at least that was all I got).

Here's a YouTube demo (I don't know if it's US-only): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrNhKcxBbZo

And here's a screenshot of the page: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12299925/About%20Music%20Beta%20by%2...

I'm getting the 'only available in the United States error' could someone let us know how much this service will cost?

I can't imagine Google is thrilled about using Flash. How long before Chrome gets DRM?

I would have thought Google had learned their lesson about doing limited roll-outs: that artificially limiting the network effect kills your product. What worked for GMail hasn't worked anywhere else.

Seemed to do nothing but the opposite when they rolled out gmail.

My argument would be that GMail didn't need network effects since it was just email and you could easily use GMail while your friends still used whatever they used to use. Contrast to Wave where limited invites kept your friends from using it which kept you from using it.

this music thing isn't a social thing at all really though, it's pure utility and convenience. In this form anyways.

gmail was a product that was superior to anything any one had used before. If they were rolling out gmail today (assuming current gmail exists and is owned by another company) it would not work.

Well, Gmail was also, you know, useful. Limited availability and invites worked because you were using this useful thing no one else had, and telling them about it made them want it, and then you held the keys to let them in. It lended itself to that kind of natural organic yet viral growth.

vs the full roll out that was Google Buzz? Limited roll outs are common for Betas. Had Buzz been a limited roll out they would have recognized its faults much earlier and there would have been less privacy issues.

Github would disagree.

I think they had success generating buzz out of their invites, remember that wave and buzz were trending on Twitter for weeks. I don't really think this kills products, just sets expectations really high, if they match (Gmail) then good, if they not (Wave) then bad.

Svpply, Dribbble, Gmail, and Hulu all started with limited roll-outs.

i wonder how much space we'll be given. i can't seem to find it on any of the screens

They had a slide that said "20,000 songs".

If you were to go for a (really) conservative estimate of 3MB/mp3, that tops out at 7.5GB. I'd be interested in hearing what their pricing would be for more space. I jumped the gun and bought 50gb worth of space on Amazon Cloud Drive. Their player and lack of linux support both suck so if Google can beat them on either front and price, I might switch. At this point I trust Google alot more than Amazon at developing a good software product.

Why would I pay for this over a service I already pay for and love (Rdio)? Looking for some thoughts

Looking at your comment history I have to wonder if this is a genuine question or random negative grumpy rhetoric trolling.

Rdio seems to have a selected catalogue, while you could upload your own collection to this Google Music service.

I am a huge fan of rdio and use it daily. However my collections of live shows and misc stuff will never make it up to my rdio account as of now. Thats a +1 for a music locker service.

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