Google Play Music on the App Store | Hacker News Reader

Google Play Music on the App Store

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119 pointsmikeevans112 comments

I've been trying out a different music service every few months, here's something interesting I found.

Number of songs:

  - Xbox Music 30 million.
  - Apple iTunes 26 million.
  - Amazon MP3 25 million.
  - Spotify 20 million.
  - Rdio 20 million.
  - Google Music 18 million.

I've most recently been using Google Music since I can upload songs albums which aren't available in their library (e.g. Beatles). However, Xbox Music is pretty neat too. It's actually pre-installed on every Windows 8 computer and you can listen to just about any songs without ads in high quality for free. (Not sure why Microsoft doesn't advertise this more.)

Other thoughts: Apple is the only one without a cross platform mobile offering. For I instance, I'd like iTunes radio on Android or Windows Phone. Spotify has by far the best social experience and Rdio has the best designed web/mobile interface.

Those are large enough differences that it is probably entire labels that don't have a contract with certain services.

Free music on Xbox Music on Windows 8 only lasts 6 months, and has ads.

There is Nokia Music too - 20 million songs

http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/11/17/10-things-you-didn...

Free streaming on Nokia Lumia devices and free 1 year subscription. 3 hours of offline mixes ( at a time ) for download.

Regarding Xbox Music, I thought it was too good to be true. Fine print: Free streaming limited to 10 hours/month after 6 months

Understandable, TANSTAAFL. 6 months is still great value, MS should definitely market this more.

Good catch. I guess I hadn't used it long enough to run into those limitations. FYI they have an Android and iOS app as well as an incredibly nicely designed web player. http://music.xbox.com

I'd exhaust that quota after just a couple work days!

Why are they being so stingy with just- 6 months?

Umm, so the company that is giving away free streaming is stingy? How would you describe someone who complains about free things, or an unwillingess to pay for a service?

Gold membership isn't free...

There are two big issues with quoted catalog sizes.

#1 - Catalog sizes are inflated for international services

Services in multiple countries have larger catalogs because they include content in local languages. This means much of the catalog is there, but less useful for you (unless, of course, you're into German polkas or Swedish midsummer dances). XBox and Spotify do tally all of these up to arrive at their totals.

#2 - The full catalog in international services isn't usually available to you

At least on Spotify, you cannot access all of the items in the catalog of another country (e.g. with a US account, you cannot access all of the Dutch catalog, I tried). I'm assuming this is also the case for XBox. They list the total, but access is limited by billing address or geo location.

In that context I suggest that you and everyone else checks out the mother of all streaming services, Rhapsody (18MM songs, US only, i.e. these are actually 18MM songs available to you). I've tried the others, but time and again I found Rhapsody's catalog to be somehow bigger, more older albums, more classical music, etc.

Note: I've been a Rh member since 2004 (longer if you count listen.com). Use it on my Android, iOS, Desktop and Sonos. Haven't bought a CD since I joined (except Dutch ones, of course)

Deezer - 30 million

Is "Radio" supposed to be Rdio?

Yes, I blame auto correct! http://rdio.com

- Deezer 30 million, available on all devices

I really wish Deezer were available in the US. From what I can tell, it seems to be a great service. Blackberry support is cool, too.

I am in fact very surprised it's not available in the US but it looks like you're right:

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/d...

Note that you can upload your own music for amazon too (though there's a limit of 250 free tracks).

There are albums that I'd buy on itunes if there was an android version. But there isn't. Makes me quite annoyed at artists who go itunes-exclusive.

Yeah, I switched to Amazon also. Like the apps for Android and for my iPad. I only wanted to upload about 100 tracks purchased elsewhere so the 250 free limit is not a problem. Amazon is fairly good on price for buying new tracks.

At least on iPhone, I much prefer the Spotify interface over the Rdio one. I figured I would give Rdio for a month and I'm already missing the Spotify app. In particular the Search in the Rdio app is abysmal.

Second. I jumped from Rdio to Spotify just for that. I don't understand why people rate Rdio as the best app when basic things like search is broken: search for something, see some bad results, go back to change search, sorry, your search term is gone. Also, the Rdio is app is way too flat and there is big lack of context hint. Often time, I don't know where I am and how to get back to the "parent view", or if there is one.

I despise the Spotify interface. I was a customer for years (UK so it's been available here a while) and switched to Rdio last year mainly because the web and mobile interfaces are so much better (imo).

The Spotify interface has definitely improved somewhat in the last 6 months.

I still use it from time to time and it has got better - but I still think Rdio is miles ahead.

Rdio is fantastic. It's the only online service I pay for. I just tried xbox music and was turned off. Rdio instantly starts playing and I can switch tracks without a delay. I have the same experience on my android and sonos. It feels like a CD. Xbox music has a slight delay, which is enough to turn me away.

The killer feature of Google Music is that uploaded music integrates well with subscribed music.

If you have an album that is not on Google's "all access" catalog, you can buy it from somewhere, upload to Google, and then this music is accessible from everywhere. Just like the music from the subscription catalog. I believe (not sure) that Google even integrates your uploaded music in generated radio playlists.

For someone who buys albums on local concerts, this is a killer feature. Many albums do not appear on any subscription catalogues, or they are not available in [YOUR REGION], or the labels wait months before they release a new album in the catalogues.

When I was using Spotify, I had a playlist of my favorite jazz songs minus the songs not on Spotify, minus the songs not available in Austria. And after two months, 1/4 of the songs were greyed out and did not play anymore because the label had decided to remove these songs from my region.

Now I just have a playlist with my favorite songs.

I'm experiencing a horribly broken login process.

* Open login screen

* Switch to password app, copy password

* Switch back to Google Music, login screen loads again

* Enter credentials, 2-step verification screen loads

* Switch to Google Authenticator, get 2-step number

* Switch back to Google Music, user/password login screen loads again.

In short, I cannot authenticate using a single device, I'll have to use a second device to pull up the 2-auth number.

For me it magically pulled in my account from another installed Google app (Google Drive maybe?).

Yup, I authenticated in the Drive app and it picked up that account. Thanks for the tip.

The auth code is good for 30 seconds, can't you just time it right by getting the code before opening Google Music?

I could, but I have a complex password so I copy/paste it from another app.

I should honestly memorize that password anyway.

It's actually good for longer than that, since Google's servers allow at least one time period either way.

This exact same thing happened to me. What I did was went to the authenticator app and memorized the 6 digit number ahead of time. Then I logged in quickly (with my password already copied from 1Password) and put in the number from memory.

Worked for me!

You should also be able to generate an app-specific password for google music. https://accounts.google.com/b/0/IssuedAuthSubTokens?hl=en&hi...

In other options, you can text yourself a code and read the code from the notification banner. I don't even use the authenticator app anymore.

I;ve been using Google Music on my android device and it is by far the best music app I've used (vs. Pandora, spotify, last.fm, etc). The killer feature for me is that it learns what I like and the radio stations it generates are pretty awesome. This may be helped by the fact that I uploaded my entire mp3 library as well.

Yeah, Google music's radio stations are superior to those on Spotify etc - it seems to pick better music, and you can reorder/delete the playlist etc.

I agree it's pretty good, but it's got its own share of bugs too. The most annoying ones are (on android, not sure if iDev versions behave the same):

- if you're close to no free storage space (close == ~20MB free), streaming won't work... this is bizarre in many ways, considering the app still has some other tracks cached locally and they're playable but not pinned

- it does not work well with other music apps. if you have google music playback stopped and switch to some other app (say, start playing some podcast) google music will force-stop the playback around every 10 seconds

- and the issue pretty much every app has... if you're stuck buffering, you cannot pause/stop the playback. the pause button is unresponsive until the streaming starts again :(

but otherwise... it's probably better than most other services. The linux version of the uploader could be improved a lot.

I recently bought a Nexus 7, and I had signed up for Google Play Music "All Access" immediately after it came out. The most useful feature, I think, is being able to store music from All Access on the tablet (for completely offline use, nonetheless!). To me, this is a fantastic deal.

Does the iPhone version allow for storage of All Access music offline?

For those who would like to port their Spotify playlists to Google Music, check out Portify: https://github.com/mauimauer/portify

It isn't perfect, but it has been very helpful to me.

You sir are a gangster. Thank you.

Let me be clear, that I didn't create Portify. I am just a user.

Also, the last time I checked it wouldn't build with certain versions of node.js. I got it working with node-v0.8.1.

Really great to see this finally available, not only for the streaming service, but because at this point Google seems to be the only one dealing with music lockers the right way.

I've been using Google Music as a backup of my library for quite some time, but recently have found using it as my primary player much more convenient that loading iTunes and dealing with iTunes Match, which IMO, is broken. (there is a side story her about moving countries, but that's for another time).

Would love to see a Rdio/Spotify-esque native application as well, but that might be asking a little too much.

EDIT: The lack of a online/offline music toggle is really disappointing.

FINALLY! Been using this other app which just wrapped the web UI in a view so background playing would be enabled. This thing looks clean.

I find it amusing that since Google already had an established ad-based 'services' market before foraying into the mobile space with Android, they invest significant effort into making apps for iOS.

Whereas, since Apple has always been in the 'products' market, they don't (have to) invest any effort into the Android ecosystem. I think the first time I was ever exposed to adverts was with iTunes Radio.

Google invests significant effort into making iOS apps because they make more money from them than they do from Android.

Down voting does not change the facts.

Then explain why Google Maps are a no-choice for iOS?

P.S. Did not downvote you.

Annoying thing is that searching for "Google Play Music" (the name of the app) brings up a bunch of other junk apps first.

I'm sure that will probably change over the next few days.

More like a few minutes. It's already the first hit, now, if you just search for Google Play.

Give it some time so that people install and rate it, and hopefully should go up.

Oddly enough, the thing that prevents me from fully adopting Google Play Music as my one and only music source is its performance on the desktop.

Perhaps something's wrong with my computer(s), but playing Google Music from a browser window regularly skips when my browser has to do something intensive in another tab. It's also easy for me to accidentally close the tab. And it doesn't interface with my keyboard's media buttons.

Using Google Music via my phone (a Galaxy Nexus) is great, and Play's featureset (purchasing of music, local storage, radio, uploading, etc.) is the best of all the options.

But the desktop performance of Spotify (along with a decent featureset and a good mobile app) is what keeps me a paying customer. If Google Play Music can solve that problem (or if there's already a way to address it of which that I'm not aware), then I would switch.

My desktop performance on both my 32GB Linux desktop at work, and my 8GB Windows desktop at home is generally flawless, and I rarely have fewer than 10 tabs open in either place. I do use Chrome exclusively; maybe the performance in another browser is a different story? I assume Chrome's process-per-tab design would make this experience a little more robust.

Secondly, did you try w/ both Flash (the default) and the HTML5 player? You can enable the HTML5 player in the Labs section of Music; that might significantly alter your web experience.

Yea, I've tried both the Flash and HTML5 player, and I don't think I noticed much difference. And this is all using Chrome as well. Also, I notice the skipping not just when something intensive is happening in another tab, but also when another application is doing something heavy. Perhaps it's something on my machines... but whatever it is, it doesn't happen with Spotify's desktop app.

While it's not explicitly mentioned on the page, the Chromecast icon is visible in the screenshot, so apparently there's parity there with the Android app, which is nice. Google Music's web version strangely doesn't support Chromecast, leaving iOS people with no way of using Chromecast at all.

I can't really see this replacing Spotify for my streaming music services. If anything is going to do that, it's going to be Rdio. But I really can see this filling the hole in my phone that is streaming purchased content that isn't available through the streaming service. The fact that iTunes (or Spotify, or Rdio) doesn't have this is pretty disappointing. When I download an album off of Bandcamp, I have to download it to every computer I have iTunes on, and then sync my phone to listen to it. That's difficult, and it means I have slightly different libraries on every device I own. This is a decent enough stopgap until hopefully a better app implements it (preferably Rdio, because I'd love to move to them if it wasn't for their less than stellar music selection in comparison to Spotify).

A good start. No iPad version or landscape. Still infinitely better than the stock music app

>> "Still infinitely better than the stock music app"

I've always found the iOS Music app superior to pretty much everything else (including Play). Obviously it doesn't have streaming but as a player the UI is much better. I find Play quite confusing and it wastes a lot of space (e.g. the artists screen - I don't need to see a photo of the artist with their name, it doesn't add any value).

You can stream music with iTunes Radio. And You can kind of stream music (music already in your iTunes library) if you use iTunes Match.

Music app requires iTunes.

What does it require iTunes for?

sorry stock Apple music app

I am not aware of anything that the stock Apple music app requires iTunes for.

How else do you get music into the app? Also itunes Radio and buy songs via itunes on the device is still itunes

If you define buying music through the app itself as 'iTunes' then this is a meaningless discussion aimed at bashing the word 'iTunes'.

You can use the app perfectly well without ever going near the desktop iTunes software, as you say by buying music through the device, or using iTunes Radio.

If you have other music you want to load, the yes, you need to use the desktop app for that.

What's your point?

iTunes sucks, hard. The desktop version in unavoidable if you want an mp3 file.

Nah. If you only get stuff from Apple it absolutely does not.

iTunes is only required if you want to add your own music.

If you subscribe to iTunes match then it will stream any music from your uploaded library.

Music.app has a few streaming options. You can stream songs you've bought on iTunes. You can listen to iTunes Radio. You can pay $25/year and stream any MP3 you possess on your home computer and also then get iTunes Radio commercial free.

edit: I'm pretty sure iTunes actually uses a cached progressive download, but the difference is academic.

> No iPad version

I really wonder why Google does this. It took them months to release the iPad version of their Maps app, with very few UI differences. There's something broken about that workflow.

Not quite as bad as the oft-promised Google Drive for Linux, but still.

Web page versions of stuff tend to work better on an iPad than on an iPhone. Facebook didn't have an iPad app for the longest time.

Incentive? Do people use Maps and Music on iPad to the extent that they do on iPhone? Personally, I only really use both when I'm on the move - I'm very unlikely to pull out a tablet at that point.

This applies a lot more to Maps than it does to Music, of course.

But large-screen maps is a lot more useful than large-screen music UI.

Is it? I would argue that "portable" maps are more important than large screen ones.

They have to support the iPhone because it's almost half the smartphone users in the US. They don't need to support the iPad because they don't think of it as an important platform.

I believe they rely on metrics that they get from android devices where probably tablets aren't that popular among users of such services.

Really? I’m trying it and I disagree. I don’t understand what’s the difference between Listen Now and My Library; I though it would search in the entire Play library but it only finds stuff I already have, even when creating Instant Mixes; recommendations are empty; scrolling is terrible, it loads thumbnails only after you completely stop scrolling (like YouTube), losing most of their usefulness; parts of the UI seem cobbled together (eg. it overrides the cancel button in the AirPlay action sheet displaying an ugly mix of an old and new button); playback stopped as I was typing this, I killed it and now it’s stuck at Loading My Library making no progress.

I’ll stay on Rdio.

Do you have a subscription or trial for All Access? Listen Now and instant mixes should definitely use the whole catalog if you do - at least they do in Android and Web.

I don’t, I guess my expectations were wrong, not very clear though. So what are the features available without a subscription? Just music upload from my computer? I was under the impression that some kind of radio/streaming was included in the free account.

Without the subscription it's just a locker really - upload up to 20,000 songs and they're available online on all your devices, I think you can pin them to a device too.

I subscribed Google Play Music when they first offered the service and enjoyed it but I feel Spotify is much more conducive to 3rd party add-ons, I couldn't find many differences with the subscription based libraries (the ability to upload to google play is nice...but also free) and Spotify actually has an API, Desktop Application, actual 3rd party support. In my experience any 3rd party support (last.fm, etc) in Google Music breaks every release, which was the main reason why I switched back to Spotify. It may be a little more $ each month but I found the advantages Spotify has over GPM were worth the cost.

Neat, maybe I can convince my wife to use it. I haven't even touched my iPod since I started using Play Music (on Android) - although my biggest beef is that you can't store your offline music on an SD card.

I really wish the Google Experience devices would start shipping with more storage. I have a 64G iPhone because I don't want to be concerned about how much storage I'm using (right now it's around the 32GB mark). SD cards are a total hack and just complicate the UX.

Agree about the UX. It'd be great if they could allow you to expand storage but also abstract away the separation between SD card / internal storage.

Music services I have tried: Google Music, Xbox Music, Spotify, and iTunes. After using each for over three months. I have stuck with Google Music. Why I did go with the big G? It was the ability to upload all my music (up to 20,000) songs to the cloud. This plus Google All Music, covers my music need well! The ability to upload my own music to the cloud strikes a good balance for me. I hated having Spotify and not finding what I was looking for. Then I was stuck transferring MP3s to my phone. Now, my library syncs from my iMac to Google.

If Apple ever rolls out a subscription music service this will be removed from the App Store, right? Or is it that you just can't sign up for Google Play Music through the iOS app?

Nope, it'll probably stay then.

>Or is it that you just can't sign up for Google Play Music through the iOS app?

This. This isn't allowed, unless Google opted to use in-app purchase to set up the subscription and give Apple a 30% cut.

Apple already has such a service - iTunes Radio.

... and only 24 weeks after it was promised "within weeks."

My biggest problem with Google Play Music was always the size of my library. I have almost 180 gigs of music. I think I used GPM the first week it was out and obviously my whole library didn't get uploaded. I wouldn't mind so much if it simply kept track of what my newest music was and deleted unlistened to music. If I have to manually manage playlist of what can go on the service then I might as well just put the music directly on my phone or iPad.

I won't be switching from Rdio until the web app has a way to pin music to devices. I think Google Music is definitely a more featureful product and would use its ability to upload my own music in some cases. But I can't be bothered to go through all my favorite albums on a little mobile screen and pin them.

Isn't "pin music to device" what the little orange down-pointing arrow does in the Play Music app?

It is. But, I need to be able to do it from the web app, I don't want to have to go through hundreds of albums on my device and do it. I want to do put $(".pin_button").click() in my Chrome console and be done with it.

Ah I see. Hey that's a pretty good feature request.

maybe you could just make one playlist, put all music you have in there, and pin that list on the device? Then you should have all your music and playlists available locally.

Good idea. This might meet my JQuery-able requirement.

I tried it out when it first came out...just to see. But I wasn't nearly as happy with it as I am with Pandora. Maybe when the youtube service comes out it'll be worth paying if it comes with both, but otherwise I'll stick with pandora and torch music.

I can figure out how to download stuff so it is available for offline playing, but I can't figure out how to filter out only content that is available offline.

This is a feature available in the Android app as an "On Device" filter. Has anyone figured this out?

You have to hit the "pin" icon on the playlist, I believe.

I'm not wondering how to download songs for offline playing. I'm wondering how to toggle/filter so I can only see the offline content.

After reading through https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/1250232?hl=en-G... I do not think the iOS version has this functionality right now.

Okay. Now give me a proper app instead of this stupid downloader in the system preferences...

Still not available in Canada.

The icon needs some work

been waiting for this!

Still not available in Canada.

What's shocking is that this is news.

Apple sucks.

Care to elaborate on that? All those downvotes aren't coming out of nowhere.

"The company had previously closed the door on iOS users because Flash was needed to enforce DRM restrictions set by music labels. Now, Google appears to have overcome that issue and is nearly ready to launch."

http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/03/google-music-ios-app-laun...

Apple's decision to not support Flash hindered this port.

For the record, the delay has absolutely nothing to do with Apple withholding the Google Music iOS app. Google didn't decide to start developing it until early October [1].

[1] http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/03/google-music-ios-app-laun...

"nothing to do with Apple withholding the Google Music iOS app"

Correct. It had everything to do with the music labels demanding Flash DRM, and Apple deciding not to support Flash at all. From your article:

Talk about bad journalism. That is not true. Google's All Access music streaming has _never_ been blocked by flash DRM restrictions. The raw MP3 streams have been available ever since its inception, as it has been included in Simon Weber's python google music API implementation [1] for about 5 months (which is a few weeks after All Access was announced). From that API it has been implemented in those 3rd-party apps like GMusic and Cloud Play.

So, the only "bad guy" here is Google for not making an iOS app sooner.

[1] https://github.com/simon-weber/Unofficial-Google-Music-API

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