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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
>> "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).
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 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.
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.
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?
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.
[+] [-] sahaskatta|12 years ago|reply
Number of songs:
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.
[+] [-] notlisted|12 years ago|reply
#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)
[+] [-] bentcorner|12 years ago|reply
Understandable, TANSTAAFL. 6 months is still great value, MS should definitely market this more.
[+] [-] manojlds|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] joebo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cjlm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ntnj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smackfu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lmm|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nakkiel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthuggins|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaront|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bookwormAT|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tvon|12 years ago|reply
* 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.
[+] [-] Kudos|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smackfu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sprokolopolis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] craigc|12 years ago|reply
Worked for me!
[+] [-] cmelbye|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alooPotato|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordanthoms|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ByronT|12 years ago|reply
Does the iPhone version allow for storage of All Access music offline?
[+] [-] viraptor|12 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] sprokolopolis|12 years ago|reply
It isn't perfect, but it has been very helpful to me.
[+] [-] aaronmoodie|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] joeblau|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ultimoo|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] einehexe|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endemic|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] publicfig|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tiziano88|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moskie|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] zhengyi13|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] apendleton|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] publicfig|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skyjedi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|12 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] micampe|12 years ago|reply
I’ll stay on Rdio.
[+] [-] TillE|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] disposition2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dabernathy89|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kudos|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fumar|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yhippa|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ben1040|12 years ago|reply
This. This isn't allowed, unless Google opted to use in-app purchase to set up the subscription and give Apple a 30% cut.
[+] [-] swasheck|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Larrikin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesaguilar|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrownaway2424|12 years ago|reply