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Does Google Play allow downloading matched and uploaded songs, or just streaming them? I don't think they did when they first launched the service, which made it much less appealing for me.

And I assume no iTunes playlist support? No play count, last played, ratings?

iTunes Match has worked flawlessly for me. I'd be interested to know what issues others are having.

No support for nested smart playlists, some wrong matches with no way to correct them (particularly clean/explicit), ends of songs getting cut off, issues with not updating play counts and last played, etc. And the matching in general still is pretty weak even after more than a year, particularly the case of matching all tracks on an album except for one or two. Apple absolutely should be able to get that working, particularly on albums that are extremely common.

Ok, the "fix match" lets you notify them that it failed and retry the upload again, not too exciting.

Considering iTunes Match doesn't have any way to send feedback or fix wrong matches, I'd say that's pretty exciting. Match users have been asking for the feature for a year and Apple has yet to provide it.

Anyone tried the google matching yet? How accurate is it, what % of your files got matched, and if it makes mistakes is there a way to correct or force an upload?
 
Does Google Play allow downloading matched and uploaded songs, or just streaming them? I don't think they did when they first launched the service, which made it much less appealing for me.

And I assume no iTunes playlist support? No play count, last played, ratings?

Yes. You can import iTunes playlists.
Yes, there's play count.
Yes, you can rate your songs. (thumbs up or down)
Yes, there's last played.
There's sharing.
There's the ability to re-download your music.
There's "last added"

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How many people actually know about this or do it?

Really? How many people know how to turn off tracking in iOS or other features.

If you are concerned over privacy - you learn how to do this - whatever website, platform, etc is. If you don't - it's a user issue.



Advertising revenues made up 96% of Google's revenues in 2010 and 2011.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312512025336/d260164d10k.htm

And in 2012 I guess we'll see. Whether it's $1 or 4% or somewhere inbetween. The fact remains - Google does not soley make their money off advertising.
 
Thanks for the info. Is play count synced with iTunes, or a separate one? It sounds like it isn't compatible with iTunes star ratings? And I assume it doesn't keep up with iTunes smart playlists, they are imported manually?
 
It's working like that for religion (like prove that god doesn't exist), I don't see any reason it won't work for this case :rolleyes:

You can't be serious. You can't make a ridiculous claim and then ask others to disprove it. Just shows you're going around spreading FUD.
 
And people wonder why Google and Apple just can't cooperate. Because Google just has to compete with Apple in everything to get more more more more more and more.
 
Thanks for the info. Is play count synced with iTunes, or a separate one? It sounds like it isn't compatible with iTunes star ratings? And I assume it doesn't keep up with iTunes smart playlists, they are imported manually?

No - play counts aren't synced. And no - not compatible with star ratings (at least at current) nor smart lists.

The app (on android at least) I find to be much better that the UI/UX on the web.

That being said - they've at least done quite a bit to make it a decent transition from iTunes. It's not iTunes - so I can accept that not every feature of iTunes can/will be ported over.

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And people wonder why Google and Apple just can't cooperate. Because Google just has to compete with Apple in everything to get more more more more more and more.

iAds, iPad mini, Apple Maps

This is what competitors do.
 
I use pretty much all of the Google products. Maybe its just me but I really dont care what info Google gathers from my web searches. Doesnt really bother me. I think the products they offer are very well done and most are free.
 
I'm seriously considering moving to Android when Key Lime is released. They offer Apple like services a lot cheaper! Tired of paying premium when Google is offering their tablets, phones and services for a lower cost.

Edit: I'm aware maps are free!

Ah yes, the bait and switch in action. Sooner or later you'll realize that "free" doesn't actually exist. Somewhere along the line, you'll be making the company money in some form, and/or give up some amount of quality user experience. There's always a cost.

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is there a way to see what bit rate the song is playing after upload? or does it use the uploaded file to stream from?

They claim to stream back at 320kbps.

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I thought it just needed to scan now. Instead it's uploading each and every song of mine.

Probably needs to be a server-side scan.

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You can't be serious. You can't make a ridiculous claim and then ask others to disprove it. Just shows you're going around spreading FUD.

You just said what he said. hahaha

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And in 2012 I guess we'll see. Whether it's $1 or 4% or somewhere inbetween. The fact remains - Google does not soley make their money off advertising.

They charge for corporate Google Apps accounts at $50 a head. Probably just a fraction of their revenues, but your point is valid based on this alone.
 
It's working like that for religion (like prove that god doesn't exist), I don't see any reason it won't work for this case :rolleyes:

The burden of proof is on the accuser there, dude guy. Would you want me walking around telling everyone you killed Jimmie Hoffa, and then, when you show up in front of a jury obviously claiming otherwise, I just retort...

"Yeah? Well prove you didn't"!
 
I wonder if Google can match my ripped CDs any better than Apple. I doubt I have one complete CD where at least one or two of the songs weren't uploaded even though Apple matched 80% of the album. Just how dumb is their software? Chances are those remaining one or two songs are from the same Album.

And for all the tin foil hat crowd, stop searching for man sized Victoria Secret garments. :p
 
I love iTunes Match, but I'm glad Apple has competition. Complacency is never good for the consumers.

Besides, Google's service is not available in Canada yet, but I want to see how they match international music which makes up 20% of my library.
 
I wonder if Google can match my ripped CDs any better than Apple. I doubt I have one complete CD where at least one or two of the songs weren't uploaded even though Apple matched 80% of the album

I wouldn't bet on it. Only 50% of my physical iTunes collection was uploaded by google play...
 
I pay for amazon mp3 music and it's good but the ios app crashes all the time.

If there was a decent google play app (music), it'd put it over the top.
 
I wouldn't bet on it. Only 50% of my physical iTunes collection was uploaded by google play...

Google's Play store has about 15M songs (I believe) vs Apple's 25M (I believe). I imagine it really depends on what music you have in your library. Everyone is bound to have their own success/failure based on their content.
 
Is play count synced with iTunes

No

It sounds like it isn't compatible with iTunes star ratings? /QUOTE]

Yes, you are correct. Although it has it's own binary rating system (thumbs up or down) that appears randomly so I assume a rather poor attempt was made to import star ratings from iTunes

And I assume it doesn't keep up with iTunes smart playlists

Well, at least for me none of my smart playlists ported across. Never mind keeping up to date (as in cloud based sync?! Nowhere near that level of sophistication). I say this again. Google play is a VERY rudimentary web based system. Not a patch on iTunes (yet)

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I pay for amazon mp3 music and it's good but the ios app crashes all the time.

If there was a decent google play app (music), it'd put it over the top.

It's a streaming service. Unless you're on LTE and unlimited data plan I would imagine your experience will be very unsatisfactory (certainly in large parts of Europe where LTE is still immature)
 
Are you aware that AAC is just a fancy name for MPEG-4 Audio, or m4a? It's not really a "vendor-specific" format. I haven't seen an audio player that couldn't play m4a files for a long, long time. Maybe ten years ago, but no longer...
Granted, it's not vendor-specific (really made a mistake thinking that).
But there are enough players without support for AAC, with the Sandisk Sansa Clip/Clip+ line being notable examples that are still being sold. For a small, inexpensive player, they are really good ones (audio quality is much better than the iPod shuffle, and at least on par with the iPod touch).

But I might consider switching to AAC - even tough open source (Rockbox!) support is - unfortunately - limited in some areas.
 
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