The main gripe I hear about the Nexus S is the lack of an external SD card slot and how that effects the ability to use your phone as a music player.
Subsonic is the solution.
For those not familiar, Subsonic allows you to stream your entire music collection not only to any Flash-enabled web browser anywhere in the world, but to Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7 devices. The Android app automatically caches tracks you play so that they can be played back in offline mode if needed and also cuts down on bandwidth wasted on frequently played tracks. The cache size is adjustable.
An upcoming release of Subsonic will also allow video streaming.
As an added bonus, you can keep your music library in FLAC and it will be transcoded on the fly to MP3 as you stream.
The whole point of a microSD is to not have cloud-based services...
zachthemaster said:
The whole point of a microSD is to not have cloud-based services...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Even if the NS did have a MicroSD slot, the largest available is 32GB. My music library is 300GB+ of mostly FLAC goodness. Deciding which albums I should have on hand at any given time and then transcoding them to something reasonable for a mobile device or having a complete duplicate library in lower bitrate MP3s and still swapping out albums manually is a PITA. This is not only a solution, but a solution with countless perks.
If 32GB is enough for you or you don't mind wasting your time, I suppose you can ***** about the lack of expandable storage and swim upstream against the proliferation of streaming services all you want.
mmas0n said:
Even if the NS did have a MicroSD slot, the largest available is 32GB. My music library is 300GB+ of mostly FLAC goodness. Deciding which albums I should have on hand at any given time and then transcoding them to something reasonable for a mobile device or having a complete duplicate library in lower bitrate MP3s and still swapping out albums manually is a PITA. This is not only a solution, but a solution with countless perks.
If 32GB is enough for you or you don't mind wasting your time, I suppose you can ***** about the lack of expandable storage and swim upstream against the proliferation of streaming services all you want.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While the tone was a bit overly hostile, I agree with you to an extent. Cloud-based services definitely seem to be the direction technology is moving in. Whether or not that's a good thing will be up to the individual.
Personally, 16gbs is perfectly sufficient for my needs as I don't see the need to carry my entire .mp3/flac/whatevs collection around with me, I won't argue against the convenience of being able to access it whenever, wherever should I decide I'm in the mood for something not currently loaded on my device. So I'm interested in seeing the development of this app. So, to be clear, this would just be a streaming service akin to Pandora/Slacker(but obviously it's my collection, not something generated by them/someone else) or would I be able to drag/drop/load my device with the songs of choice and disconnect?
mmas0n said:
Even if the NS did have a MicroSD slot, the largest available is 32GB. My music library is 300GB+ of mostly FLAC goodness. Deciding which albums I should have on hand at any given time and then transcoding them to something reasonable for a mobile device or having a complete duplicate library in lower bitrate MP3s and still swapping out albums manually is a PITA. This is not only a solution, but a solution with countless perks.
If 32GB is enough for you or you don't mind wasting your time, I suppose you can ***** about the lack of expandable storage and swim upstream against the proliferation of streaming services all you want.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not bashing or hatin' or anything. I just think that you don't need 200GBs+ of music at you all the time. 32GB isn't enough for me, I have a music collection of over 550GBs, but no way in hell do I need al that ever at once. I'd rather have a microSD to store files and apps and backups and all that. I pick and choose my favorite albums, with about 6GBs to spare, so it does not matter to me, although I do believe that a hardware hack could come along. I'm just sayin'...
And please don't get me wrong, I have nothing against cloud-based services.
I was probably a little too hostile and for that, I apologize.
One of the many things I like about Subsonic is that it is a streaming solution that is not actually "in the cloud" but hosted from your own PC and your own library. I got burned pretty bad when Apple bought out LaLa.com and killed them, leaving a bad taste in my mouth regarding cloud-based music services. All of my music licensing was gone and I received an iTunes gift card (that I refuse to use) for my troubles.
I posted this because I really like Subsonic, not just as a solution to a lack of expandable storage on the NS but as a media library and player in general. I'm hoping that some other people who haven't discovered it yet can do so.
Cheers.
I prefer AudioGalaxy.
My gripe with the no SD card as far as music is conserned is that I fly A LoT. Average twice a week. So I don't always have access to cloud based music. I do like the I would still have to pick and choose which songs before hand to have enough for say, an 8 hour flight. So, I've just had to pick and choose what I carry, and will rotate out occasionally.
zachthemaster said:
And please don't get me wrong, I have nothing against cloud-based services.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
me either, i use DropBox (free)
but even with a 3G connection, it is still slowwwwwwwwww compared to a local microSD
Beatle405 said:
My gripe with the no SD card as far as music is conserned is that I fly A LoT. Average twice a week. So I don't always have access to cloud based music. I do like the I would still have to pick and choose which songs before hand to have enough for say, an 8 hour flight. So, I've just had to pick and choose what I carry, and will rotate out occasionally.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like subsonic because it doesn't just stream them it caches the songs. so you queue the songs it downloads them and then it is on your device. they show up in the native music app as well. I like it because i can choose music in the terminal as opposed to while i'm packing. I have used subsonic for about 9 months and absolutely love it. it has great settings like transcoding bitrate based on your connection wifi and mobile. I also dig the web interface when i'm at work. i'm excited about the video streaming as well. the server is ~$25 but I believe only one person works on it. i'm a sucker for small programs and the license can be used on multiple machines. The developer is very helpful as well.
mmas0n said:
Even if the NS did have a MicroSD slot, the largest available is 32GB. My music library is 300GB+ of mostly FLAC goodness. Deciding which albums I should have on hand at any given time and then transcoding them to something reasonable for a mobile device or having a complete duplicate library in lower bitrate MP3s and still swapping out albums manually is a PITA. This is not only a solution, but a solution with countless perks.
If 32GB is enough for you or you don't mind wasting your time, I suppose you can ***** about the lack of expandable storage and swim upstream against the proliferation of streaming services all you want.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So i guess in the concrete jungle of a subway system where i am i can be enjoying my "300gb" goodness of FLAC music when there is no network service???
Come on, streaming services are great for discovering varieties of new or different stuff but for stuff i already own i'd rather have them on my person, even if i can only carry around 32GB of them at a time, which in itself is staggering.
If you must have hundreds of geebees of music on you at a time, get a Cowon or Archos with hundreds of geebess built in.
How in God's name does someone amass a collection of over 550 gbs of music.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
I just got subsonic setup tonight and I have to admit its a sick program. The majority of my mp3's are at 320kbs and I had no issues at all streaming them over 3g. Ill keep on toying with it before I donate but so far so good.
fosdos4790 said:
How in God's name does someone amass a collection of over 550 gbs of music.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Years of collecting live music concerts in .shn/.flac
Try over 4 terabytes
Oh...and +1 to AudioGalaxy
Bronk93 said:
I just got subsonic setup tonight and I have to admit its a sick program. The majority of my mp3's are at 320kbs and I had no issues at all streaming them over 3g. Ill keep on toying with it before I donate but so far so good.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i did play with it as well, it's very nice for HOME use
but i found when i try to stream music DRIVING, it occasionally (a lot) breaks up or get choppy audio
and then from Nexus S streams over Bluetooth to the car receiver
so anyone riding in the Subway system, sub sonic is totally out of the question.
unless you are lucky to be in one of those countries where the transit system have cellphone relays inside the subway tunnels
That's odd because SS caches the songs to phone storage to cut down on buffering but if your in a spotty reception area you will probably have that issue with streaming in general.
One bug I've ran into and I think this is an issue with the web browser is when I try to log on using the web browser and not the android app I get an error "browser has too many redirects" or something like that.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
LordLugard said:
So i guess in the concrete jungle of a subway system where i am i can be enjoying my "300gb" goodness of FLAC music when there is no network service???
Come on, streaming services are great for discovering varieties of new or different stuff but for stuff i already own i'd rather have them on my person, even if i can only carry around 32GB of them at a time, which in itself is staggering.
If you must have hundreds of geebees of music on you at a time, get a Cowon or Archos with hundreds of geebess built in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you are offline, you use Subsonic in offline mode and play whatever you have cached. It's a rolling cache with adjustable size. I have mine set to 10GB, so even if I'm in an area with slow/no service, I can listen to whatever the last 10GB of streamed music is.
So, worst case scenario: you're limited to offline mode and can only listen to what you've been listening to lately. Essentially the same as if you were not using Subsonic and you're stuck on the Subway.
... and best case scenario is you can play whatever you want whenever you want it.
I'm really trying, but I don't see the downside here.
Could not figure out subsonic at all so I gave up. I have 16gbs of music and I'm getting a nexus s in about a week. I plan on using mspot. 4 bucks for 40 gbs isn't bad. Ill eventually buy a zune hd or ipod touch 32gb. Or just use nexus or g2 as mp3.
Sent from my HTC Vision
If you had problems with subsonic check out this page....http://monroeworld.com/android/subsonic/
Its the page I used to get subsonic working.
Related
I've long since turned in my Tilt for a Motorola Q9H but had to share with you guys. For some time now I've been on a quest to find a mobile music streaming application that would give me a nice interface and access to my home music collection. Social.FM desktop and mobile client is not quite there but head and shoulders above anything else I've found. The mobile client is a one time $20 but if you're interested I can help you get access to a promo copy. The desktop client is free. There's a station list on the mobile with access to a hundred or so genres and sub-genres.
Once you install the desktop client and point it to your local music collection it shows up on the mobile. Too easy.
What is wrong with Orb? it is free, supports video, live TV and webcams as well as music.
wizzzard said:
What is wrong with Orb? it is free, supports video, live TV and webcams as well as music.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ummmm...
ORB is nowhere close. I tried it. The web interface is kludgy. And why would you want to have to switch to a different application to change to a different album or artist. The interface of the Social.FM client is iPod like. One of the things about Orb that was frustrating was that the streaming format was not supported in all players, or at least the one I wanted to use. It's been a while since I totally dismissed it so I can't remember the details. I tried them all. The best streamer was 40th Floor iPlay with the server option running on my desktop. But the interface on that is made for a stylus. I have no need to use a stylus, ever.
Incidentally, that's why I gave up the Tilt for the Q9H. And I need to be able to type with one hand which is not possible with the Tilt. As soon as the I-Mate 8502 comes out I'll switch to that.
Don't get me wrong. The Social.FM player is not quite there. You can't pause and there is no AVRCP support. I imagine that pausing is coming soon. I just had a full workout at the gym while streaming from my desktop at work and had zero skips. I found an interview with the CEO of Social.FM (http://www.onuiq.com/) and he said that they're using Ogg Vorbis encoding. Says they can get full quality over EDGE.
You really should give it a try.
I see its mercora. They are the ones who wanted to charge you for streaming your own music collection. Major fail.
Surur
Sounds pretty cool in spite of its short-comings. It will be great when this concept is fully dialed-in.
surur said:
I see its mercora. They are the ones who wanted to charge you for streaming your own music collection. Major fail.
Surur
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, they must have seen the light cuz right now I'm streaming from, not only mine, but my buddy's desktop for free.
Side note:
If I had my way I'd be streaming Slacker.com to my phone. They have, hands down, the best content available. The stations (genres/sub-genres) are put together by "music experts". And I can vouch for them. I even wrote an application to sniff their ID3 tags and automatically download full quality MP3's (theirs is 128kbit) and then sync that to my iPod automatically with ml_iPod. They have aspirations to release their own hardware player but not only hasn't that happened but I think it's misguided. I would [so] pay to stream their content to my phone.
So I use iTunes to download podcasts (both audio and video) constantly. Can't live without it even
I want to dump my iPhone and swap to my Fuze full-time, but one of the major issues I'm having is finding a Podcast replacement. iTunes does a nice job in updating, downloading, and managing (auto-deleting) old podcasts. I actually have ~8GB in podcasts on my iPhone right now. So Podcasting is big for me for entertainment and news
I've found numerous solutions for just about everything else, but no one seems to have an easy answer for podcasting --
The closest I can think is setting WM to sync my podcast iTunes folder to my WM micro SD card (if that link is even possible) and then using windows mobile's interface to try and play them.
Does anyone have a better solution? Paid or free, it doesn't matter. I'm all for paying a one-time fee to download a nice podcast manager
Most Podcasts have a matching RSS feed and most RSS readers support the audio files contained in the feed. I personally use NewsBreak by Illium Software. OEM version is RSS hub. Which is floating around XDA and is cooked into a lot of the roms. It allows you to decide how many you want to keep of each feed as well so you don't overload your storage card.
I'm using Beyond Pod. It's free and works good.
I agree with rangie, Beyond Pod does a great job.
You can sync nearly any storage device w/ iTunes...
http://lifehacker.com/5273791/synchronize-nearly-any-storage-device-with-itunes
I use BeyondPod to catch podcasts, and Kinoma FreePlay to listen, but it took a few tries to get the settings right:
In BeyondPod, I set it to automatically turn on wifi and download new podcasts in the middle of the night, then turn off wifi an hour later. I think I have it set to keep podcasts for 9 days -- haven't found an equivalent to iTunes' ability to delete from a playlist once it's been listened to, but this works well enough.
I have every feed save the podcasts to the same folder. In Kinoma FreePlay, I have that folder saved as a favorite. That way, I can listen to podcasts in the car and go from one to the next, even in different feeds, without touching the phone.
With iTunes and an iPod, I could do all this much easier with a smart playlist. No such luck on WM, at least not with freeware.
Just wondering if this feature came with 2.2 or if the info given by Google is for for the Gingerbread release. I've been waiting for this feature for a long time. Thanks guys!
pjd2011 said:
Just wondering if this feature came with 2.2 or if the info given by Google is for for the Gingerbread release. I've been waiting for this feature for a long time. Thanks guys!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you can do this with orb. music hasn't ever really been a problem. the only issue to streaming is divx/xvid movies.
go to orb, make an account. put orb on your computer. then, just make sure orb is running when you leave your house, and that you have an internet connection. then, on your phone, go to mycast.orb.com, log in with your account info. stream.
you can also stream non xvix/divx movies, look at your pictures, and look at documents.
pjd2011 said:
Just wondering if this feature came with 2.2 or if the info given by Google is for for the Gingerbread release. I've been waiting for this feature for a long time. Thanks guys!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The streaming capabilities are already in the OS, it came along with the cloud to phone notifications. The software is not done yet. Simplify Media is the company in charge of the streaming software. On their blog it says that they pulled their iPhone and desktop apps last month and that they will support existing accounts for at least 3 months. Based on that, I would guess we'll see the software mid-summer, probably around the iPhone launch.
For reference here are the 5 other active threads specifically about music streaming. There are plenty of others that mention it. Try searching next time.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=687180
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=686826
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=686782
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=689011
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=687943
GMote works well for me
J.L.C. said:
GMote works well for me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
gmote isn't for streaming, as far as i know, it's for using your phone to control music on your computer.
correct me if i'm wrong
timothydonohue said:
gmote isn't for streaming, as far as i know, it's for using your phone to control music on your computer.
correct me if i'm wrong
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can stream while on WiFi, assuming the host machine is on the same network.
I highly recommend Subsonic for streaming music to your phone. You can use it from any web browser or the Android app. One of the best features IMO is that you can set up different users based on how you're streaming. For example, I have 2 users... 1 for streaming over EDGE or 3G with bitrate limited to 64kbps, another user for streaming over WiFi with unlimited bitrate. It also handles M3U playlists and saves the entire playlist (not just the currently playing song) so there isn't much skipping at all. Honestly, the only downside is that the dev hasn't yet implemented an option to shuffle songs.
http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp
-------------------------------------
Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App
travon802 said:
I highly recommend Subsonic for streaming music to your phone. You can use it from any web browser or the Android app. One of the best features IMO is that you can set up different users based on how you're streaming. For example, I have 2 users... 1 for streaming over EDGE or 3G with bitrate limited to 64kbps, another user for streaming over WiFi with unlimited bitrate. It also handles M3U playlists and saves the entire playlist (not just the currently playing song) so there isn't much skipping at all. Honestly, the only downside is that the dev hasn't yet implemented an option to shuffle songs.
http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 for this. Subsonic is very good. Also worth noting; you have the option of syncing your music to your phone (well, kind of... once you select an album or playlist the Subsonic app downloads all the songs to the SD card).
timothydonohue said:
gmote isn't for streaming, as far as i know, it's for using your phone to control music on your computer.
correct me if i'm wrong
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're wrong. Gmote works for controlling your computer AND it also works for streaming music and video etc. over 3G or WiFi.
I use Gmote a lot and I highly recommend it for music & video streaming.
Plex just released their app for android today. Anyone try it on their nook yet?
I´m about to buy it!
Any early adopter has it yet?
Can't wait to try this out, but need to get home and get the media server installed first.
Funny I was just reading over on edgadget about the playon app for 2.2+.
Looks like this will give us netflix? Much better deal than playon which is subscription based and requires 2.2.
Wow, that looks effin sweet. So much for workin on my android app tonight...
works great on evo. doesn't work at all on nook :/
Works on my nook, (1.01, rooted) but quality isn't that great; laggy and audio goes out of synch sometimes. I'm guessing because the format of the video transcoded and sent by plex server isn't supported directly by the nook hardware; If plex could sent the appropriate video format (H264, baseline profile) I bet it would be much better quality.
No video for me....but music works.
Video does work on my droid x.
Hopefully they'll get it working and come out with a netflix plugin for the windows server.
I'm downloading it now seeing how it work on CM7. i report back tomorrow.
Try Subsonic (http://subsonic.org). The android app is free, and the server is donationware...supports multiple platforms (windows, mac, linux), streams audio and video, can be configured to transcode to/from whatever you like by way of ffmpeg, and it's just pretty durned awesome all around.
This is coming from someone who's been on a quest to find the perfect streaming platform since the Treo 600. I've got a dedicated server running Debian Linux w/ 3TB of storage, a 1Gbit connection, and all of my media stored on it. I've tried VLC (too wonky, could never get it to work), Orb (flaky, poor quality video, had to be run on a Windows virtual machine, wasting memory), and a bunch of others.
Was waiting for Orb to get their act together and release an actual linux client, when someone told me about Subsonic. Had it up and running in 5 minutes, streaming music (as MP3) and video (as flash) to my phone and Nook, currently, since they are both running Gingerbread....but it should be able to be tweaked to whatever format you need, and it's stable and resource friendly. I can't believe I didn't find it sooner, but the package blows me away.
Last night I drove to work streaming music to my phone, and playing it on the car stereo via BT....an hour's drive down the 60 freeway, and not a single interruption in playback. It buffers 3 songs ahead to withstand even extended signal dropouts.
It's just brilliant.
hexapus said:
Had it up and running in 5 minutes, streaming music (as MP3) and video (as flash) to my phone and Nook, currently, since they are both running Gingerbread....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what do you use on your nook to play videos that are streamed to your device in flash format?
hexapus said:
Try Subsonic (http://subsonic.org). The android app is free, and the server is donationware...supports multiple platforms (windows, mac, linux), streams audio and video, can be configured to transcode to/from whatever you like by way of ffmpeg, and it's just pretty durned awesome all around.
This is coming from someone who's been on a quest to find the perfect streaming platform since the Treo 600. I've got a dedicated server running Debian Linux w/ 3TB of storage, a 1Gbit connection, and all of my media stored on it. I've tried VLC (too wonky, could never get it to work), Orb (flaky, poor quality video, had to be run on a Windows virtual machine, wasting memory), and a bunch of others.
Was waiting for Orb to get their act together and release an actual linux client, when someone told me about Subsonic. Had it up and running in 5 minutes, streaming music (as MP3) and video (as flash) to my phone and Nook, currently, since they are both running Gingerbread....but it should be able to be tweaked to whatever format you need, and it's stable and resource friendly. I can't believe I didn't find it sooner, but the package blows me away.
Last night I drove to work streaming music to my phone, and playing it on the car stereo via BT....an hour's drive down the 60 freeway, and not a single interruption in playback. It buffers 3 songs ahead to withstand even extended signal dropouts.
It's just brilliant.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Subsonic does video? That's the first I've heard of it.
I finally got the new version to work for my Nook Color. Here is how:
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php...n-cyanogenmod/page__view__findpost__p__173121
That workaround works every time for me. Now I finally can enjoy streaming content!!! Be sure to enable "Less Colors, More Speed" in settings for smooth playback.
poofyhairguy said:
i finally got the new version to work for my nook color. Here is how:
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php...n-cyanogenmod/page__view__findpost__p__173121
that workaround works every time for me. Now i finally can enjoy streaming content!!! Be sure to enable "less colors, more speed" in settings for smooth playback.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
awesome thanks so much !!
http://techmaderelevant.blogspot.com/2011/05/htc-evo-3d-and-view-4g-preorders-are-go.html
Still uploading all my songs lol, but so far I'm loving it! Who got their invite?
Can you just post your review here instead of linking to your blog for hits?
Here ya go:
Google's cloud-based music service was announced at this year's I/O conference to much fanfare and no surprise. While rumors of a music store had been rampant for quite some time, that wasn't quite what we got. Yet. But enough talk about what is not present, here's a quick sneak peak into Google Music Beta!
Before I get into this review, I'd like to make 2 disclaimers. The first and most important is that this entire service is Beta. There are imperfections that will no doubt be addressed. The second is that this is really 2 sneak peaks: One for the webapp and uploader, one for the Android app. Now, the good stuff.
First up is the meat and potatoes: The web interface and uploader. The uploading is incredibly easy. After a quick download and install, the Music Manager will scan your computer for the music. To avoid getting the random sound effects on your computer, you can have it scan through iTunes, Windows Media Player, or specific folders. Everything is done in the background, so you don't need to pay attention to it at all. You can also have it automatically run upon start up, keeping this truly out of sight and out of mind. The average library has a lot of music, mine being about 19.5Gb of tunes. At the time of this writing, I'm at 387 track uploaded after a few hours in, so completing this task will take a long time. The good news is Google promises each user 20,000 songs. My 19.5Gb accounts for roughly 4,000 tracks. The one issue I have is that I use iTunes, which means I don't really keep track of what the files are actually named. Since many tracks have numbers in front, and as far as I can tell the Music Manager uploads in alphabetical order, some albums can't be listened to in full.
The web app will look very familiar if you've used the web version of the Android Market. Everything is very tab-centric, making it incredibly easy to use. On the left side, you have the traditional ways of sorting through your library (Songs, Artists, Albums, Genres). Under that you get to the mixes and playlists. The auto-playlists sort out the songs you've Thumbs Up'd, your recently added stuff, and the free music Google is giving out. There's not a lot of it, and it's mostly a song or two per artist, but it's nice to get free stuff.
There are two kinds of playlists. You have your traditional playlists that you custom make by drag-and-dropping songs. The Music Manager also pulls your playlists from iTunes, which is very cool. You can also create Instant Mixes (a la Genius Mixes from iTunes) from individual songs or albums, adding in similar jams. Along the bottom is the Now Playing bar with the familiar Play/Pause, track navigation, Shuffle, Repeat, and Volume controls. I think the Now Playing bar could be a bit thinner. The width of it and the banners at the top make the song and album lists seem a little cramped. While the overall look isn't as visually impressive as the Zune player, it looks a lot better than iTunes but still has the information that iTunes has. Overall it's a very easy to use service while still looking very nice.
Now the dessert. The Android app is very basic, almost to a fault. First thing's first, it works pretty well. It decided to scare me by force closing the first time I tried to play a song, but every time after it worked well. Songs take very little time to load up on WiFi, though it does take a little bit longer on 3G. Swiping left and right switches through album, artist, etc. views. When on the now playing screen, you see the album cover, Play/Pause, song and artist name. One cool thing is being able to make custom playlists in the Now Playing screen, though it would make more sense to be able to make Instant Mixes from this screen. Maybe we'll get that later. You can also download songs or albums from the Library view and Now Playing screen.
The main problem with the app is a visual one. It's just boring. Like really boring. You're given a blurry, boring background picture. There's no animation between screens, nothing. It's just blah. It would have made a lot more sense to keep the color scheme and overall feel of the web app, while tweaking it a bit for smaller screens. The other small problem is that the name of the app is Music. So is the stock music app for Android. While the icons are different, this can be a bit confusing. They should made it Google Music for differentiation.
The biggest problem facing Google Music is the complete lack of a store. Google Music, as it is now, is just cloud storage and streaming. What's weird is that in both the web and Android app, you can "shop for artist", but it just does a Google Shopping search for that artist where you can buy the songs from somewhere else. This may work for now, but it isn't a longterm solution when Amazon is offering very similar services. Google is trying to get the labels to get on board in some fashion, but how long it will take and in what form we'll get the music remains to be seen. I'm hoping for a subscription service, and knowing how Google does things (and a fair amount of rumors supporting this theory), it's very likely that that is what we'll get.
Overall, Google Music is the best solution to having too much music to fit on your phone. While I'm also a big fan of subscription services like Rdio, they just don't have everything I listen to. Amazon's cloud storage is good, but it lacks a well done web player and uploading your stuff is obnoxious. Google nailed the upload and web version for sure. Once they lock in the record deals and make the Android app visually appealing, Google Music may just be the best music solution yet.
Everybody outside of the USA should have a look at 4shared music in the android market.
The most underrated and probably best international cloud service around
Has anyone tried to play it through a different player like PowerAmp. I don't want to listen to music on a lesser player, not since I've heard the difference. Also, are the playlists recognized by other players like PowerAmp?
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got my beta invite today...yippe
got my invite but didnt see a download for the android app????
vampir4997 said:
got my invite but didnt see a download for the android app????
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You have to set up the app on your PC. There is a link from the music.google.com page near the top right for the android app.
For me, I think the biggest opportunity for the android app will be mire management features. Currently you cannot thumbs up it down a track from mobile, and you cannot delete one either. Also it does not appear to be updating the play count when tracks are played via the mobile app. Overall , the app feels more alpha tech demo than it does an actual beta.
Sent from my Samsung Vibrant using Tapatalk.
I would love to try this out but unfortunately my library is larger than 20,000 songs :/
i'm trying to figure out the best balance of bitrate and battery. my V0 mp3s eat battery. i think pandora streams at q.2 48kbps AAC. i'm trying out flac-->q.25 63kbps AAC right now.
i think slacker, pandora, and lastfm are all around 48kbps. this might be an agreement with mobile providers--they all stream higher bitrate to the desktop than mobile.
or maybe i should just use it as a locker, and download from it? can't imagine when i would need that. don't really see a good use for this yet. the only reason i would stream is for discovery or lazy mix, and those services don't sound great. if they were higher bitrate, they would eat battery.
All my music is either uploaded to amazon mp3 or on amazon's cloudshare storage. I wish there was a way to get the music over to google without downloading and then re-uploading.
q.25 aac (63kbps) sounds like doodoo. i guess i would only use google music when on a ac or car charger, so that i can afford to play higher bitrates
i don't know, maybe it's my phone's audio chip. the m4a files sound better on my pc than my phone. htc thunderbolt
Not to promote piracy, of course... HOWEVER, for those people who may not have purchased all of their MP3's, am I right in assuming it could turn into a legal issue if Google is asked by the RIAA or a law enforcement agency to turn over records?
sfreemanoh said:
Not to promote piracy, of course... HOWEVER, for those people who may not have purchased all of their MP3's, am I right in assuming it could turn into a legal issue if Google is asked by the RIAA or a law enforcement agency to turn over records?
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no - uploading your files to the cloud and streaming to your device is not "sharing" copyrighted material. no matter how dubious your music sources may or may not be, there is nothing inherently illegal about accessing through the cloud. in fact, it is only the act of sharing/uploading/seeding copyrighted material that is illegal.
i think its prety sweet so far. abiltly to deleted tracks from phone and some better 3g speeds would make it that much better. Anyone have this on multiple phones?? downloaded the player from the market to put it on my wifes phone but it is not in the settings to add an account. downloaded mine from the market and it has a different options menu.
I'm enjoying it so far. I was previously using AudioGalaxy to stream my collection from my home pc to other devices, but I definitely prefer the cloud storage method.
Took roughly 40 hours to upload 5k songs, not too bad. Had to convert some files to aac, but not many. Ran into 1 glitch where the uploader claims that a few song files don't contain anything, which they clearly do.. still not quite sure how to fix that problem, but it's only on 4 songs that I never listen to, so not that big of a deal.
At the end of the day, big thumbs up from me.
Im in beta but no streaming
I'm in the beta, installed android app via beta invite link, uploaded music. but can not find a way to stream from the cloud to my android phone. HELP!
c_urbanek said:
I'm in the beta, installed android app via beta invite link, uploaded music. but can not find a way to stream from the cloud to my android phone. HELP!
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Check out "Settings" and there should be an option to link it to your Google Account. I linked it and it still wasn't streaming though. I rebooted my phone, but that didn't seem to work either. Then randomly, a day or two later, it spontaneously started showing my music to stream. YMMV...
Offline music question ...
Here is a question for the Google Music Beta experts ...
One thing I love about Google Music on my phone is the ability to pin music. This allows us to play the 'pinned' music even when there is no 3G or WIFI service. The way I manage my offline music is through a playlist I made called "My Favorites". I have this playlist pinned, so anytime I add new music to it, it will automatically download when I am connected to WIFI. The question I have is ... what happens if I removed songs from the pinned playlist? Will they be removed from my phone? Or do they stay on my phone? I am hoping they are removed. I would hate for my SD card to get filled up with songs that I don't care to be available when I am offline.
Thanks
I have 30k+ songs in my itunes library, how do I pick and choose which songs to add/delete?