Full Circle Magazine FR

As many of you may already know, Google Music was recently rolled out to countries outside of the USA. As such, I finally had access to it in Germany, and promptly began uploading my music collection to the cloud. Due to the fact that I am not necessarily always on one of my own personal computers, and own multiple Android devices, having access to my music from anywhere was rather appealing. Nothing is worse for me than being stuck doing IT work at someone else's computer without music to listen to, especially if I can expect to be there for a long period of time. I've now been using Google Music for about 2 months, which means it’s high time for an article! For anyone who is unsure what Google Music is, it is a free service offered by Google. It essentially allows you to upload 20,000 songs to your personal cloud, and allows you to stream your music from any web browser, synchronize the cloud with personal computers using the Music Manager application, and allow Android devices full access to your cloud, from which you can pick and choose specific songs to keep locally on the device.

The Setup Setting up your cloud is fairly easy. You start up the Music Manager application, select what you want to synchronize (and whether it is automatically synchronized or not), and then begin the process. The application seems to upload a maximum of two or three songs simultaneously, and for my roughly 2,000 songs, it took between 4 and 6 hours to upload (at an average upload speed of 50KB/s). As such, this may not be suitable for anyone with a slow upload rate. Managing The Google Play store now also offers music downloads, with a similar pricing scheme to the iTunes store or Amazon. In Germany, it seems that the selection isn't quite as complete as it could be, especially for more obscure artists. However, some MP3s are available for free, although there is no easy way to filter these out. Therefore, increasing the size of your music collection should be fairly easy! Managing your playlists and song information is just as simple as with any other music program. The nice thing is that if you edit any playlists that you have set as “keep on device” on any Android systems, they will automatically download the new files, which is a nice wireless solution. My music collection is thoroughly organized with album art and completed song information; thus I can't tell you if the cloud service automatically updates the information, or how easy it is to complete missing information. I would imagine it should be rather painless. Each song can be downloaded from the web page a maximum of 2 times, and an infinite number through the music manager, as far as I can tell. This is nice if you need quick access to an MP3 without going through any additional setup.

As far as I can tell, you need to configure your computer for uploads before being able to automatically synchronize new files. I haven't yet configured uploads on my laptop, making it difficult to tell for certain. I remember initiating the process and having the laptop begin uploading the MP3s as normal, although no duplicates appeared in my cloud database. This probably means that Google sorts out duplicates after they've been uploaded – so keep in mind that you are effectively uploading your library twice for no particular reason. I could be wrong, but it certainly seems that way. If anyone has different experiences, let me know via email. Quality The uploaded files are converted to 320 kbps MP3 if they are in an unsupported format such as FLAC or OGG. Otherwise they seem to retain their file types (my MP3s are all highest-quality variable bit-rate for my mobile devices). Streaming on a mobile network results in a lower quality, in order to save your bandwidth/handle the lower speeds of a mobile network. When using a wireless network, the quality of audio is akin to playing the local file on any of my devices. However, initiating the queue can occasionally take a couple of seconds before it's buffered. Once playback has started, it seems there are no pauses between songs (with the exception of when there are massive drops in bandwidth/available speeds).

Playback Playing back music directly from your cloud storage is possible only through a web browser on non-mobile devices (laptops, PCs, etc). If you have a mobile device that runs Android, accessing and playing the music directly from the cloud is possible with the Google Music app. This does not appear to be the case with any non-Android operating systems. There is also no support for media keys, or playback information in Conky. There is, however, an extension for Chrome called Music Plus (developed by the editor-in-chief of Lifehacker), that offers further features, such as a popup controller, last.fm scrobbling, html5 notifications, etc. For a link, check the further reading section. Google Music does offer the ability to create playlists based on a song, including both music you own and music that is available on the music store. Not all MP3s seem to stream in full length when doing this, but it's an excellent option for finding new music.

Conclusion This is a very useful free service to use if you listen to your music often on mobile devices (such as a phone or tablet), where you may not want to have local copies of every song taking up space. It's also a wonderful solution for anyone who has issues syncing music with an Android device, as it effectively avoids the issue of compatibility. If you own a laptop with limited space, you may also very much appreciate this system, although there are a few restrictions when using Google Music purely in the cloud. Lastly, if you have massive amounts of music, or a slow internet connection, this is probably not for you. It could definitely fulfill the role of a cloud backup for music purchases, or for backing up certain favorite songs, as you have a lot of control over what files are ultimately uploaded. Due to the playback restrictions, I don't see Google Music replacing a local music player any time soon, but it definitely makes life a bit easier when organizing your music across multiple devices. If you're someone like me who is constantly on the hunt for more music to listen to, you may also like some of the more advanced features offered by Google. Further Reading https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ipfnecmlncaiipncipkgijboddcdmego – Music Plus http://music.google.com – Google Music website