Google Play Subscription Music Service Finally Arrives on iPhone

[cateye]

The effort some people put into being ceaselessly negative about anything not birthed from the bosom of Cupertino is exhausting. It makes even clicking on the story article threads a drag.

One thing I wish Apple would crib from this service and others like it: That iTunes Radio limits you to 6 skips even if you pay for iTunes Match is unfortunate. Not that I've run up against that limitation all that often, but sometimes the Radio algorithms hiccup and I get a flood of songs that don't make any sense. It would be nice to just flip past them and get back to the good stuff.

 

[cube]

Is it uncompressed?

Can it be used offline?

Is the interface good for only dealing with complete albums?

 

[Oletros]

or listen to music offline?!

You can listen music offline

 

[bbeagle]

Love that I can turn off explicit language in Radio app for the Kids!

Pandora and iTunes Music have explicit language options as well. Why bring this up?

Great App Google! I use on 4 devices create playlists for the kids and just download them to their devices on the fly - Easy!!

Same with Pandora and iTunes Music. If there is a difference, please explain how.

I'm using all 3 now seeing which I like better. So far, iTunes Music is winning for me. But it's a very close contest - I just like how iTunes Music integrates with all my iOS devices, and OS X.

 

[BlueGoldAce]

You can listen music offline

How?

I can't download music at this moment. I have tried. I am talking about music that I have subscribed to, not music I uploaded.

 

[Jaro65]

Pandora and iTunes Music have explicit language options as well. Why bring this up?



Same with Pandora and iTunes Music. If there is a difference, please explain how.

I'm using all 3 now seeing which I like better. So far, iTunes Music is winning for me. But it's a very close contest - I just like how iTunes Music integrates with all my iOS devices, and OS X.

I'm in the same situation. The thing is that while there is no Google Play app for OS X, it is easy to use it through its browser interface.

 

[BlueGoldAce]

Tested.

It seems that you can only download music you upload. This is unfortunate, since its competitors allow you to download music for offline play.

 

[Oletros]

How?

I can't download music at this moment. I have tried. I am talking about music that I have subscribed to, not music I uploaded.

Do you see the pin button in your music like the one in the screenshot?

 

[2457282]

You missed the part were it says their 'iTunes Match' is free.

For me I will give this a try, I have a 16GB iPhone and my music is no longer fitting. I have been keeping a separate playlist of music I removed, I can upload that to Google

iTunes Match is $25/year. With that you get all your music for free in the cloud and iTunes Radio becomes add free and is very much a pandora approach. At $10/month for Google, i would say you have done something wrong in your calculations. By my account, to take full advantage of Google you need to pay $120/per year, where with iTunes match you get it for 80% less.

 

[BlueGoldAce]

Image

Do you see the pin button in your music like the one in the screenshot?

Yes I do.

It won't download music that you have not upload yourself. This isn't a problem on my old android phones. Maybe it is just a bug with the first release?

I have test both songs I uploaded and songs that I didn't originally uploaded. It will only download music I uploaded.

Best,

-Blue

 

[Oletros]

iTunes Match is $25/year. With that you get all your music for free in the cloud and iTunes Radio becomes add free and is very much a pandora approach. At $10/month for Google, i would say you have done something wrong in your calculations. By my account, to take full advantage of Google you need to pay $120/per year, where with iTunes match you get it for 80% less.

Can you play any song you want when you want with iTunes Radio? Google All access is like Spotify not like Pandora

 

[Phil A.]

iTunes Match is $25/year. With that you get all your music for free in the cloud and iTunes Radio becomes add free and is very much a pandora approach. At $10/month for Google, i would say you have done something wrong in your calculations. By my account, to take full advantage of Google you need to pay $120/per year, where with iTunes match you get it for 80% less.

You get all your music in the cloud for $0 a year with Google Play music. The $10 a month adds Spotify like features, and unlimited skip radio.
You are correct that to take full advantage of everything Google Play music offers you would cost $120 a year, but that gives you everything iTunes match does plus the functionality of spotify which would cost $145 a year ($25 for iTunes match and $120 for Spotify)

 

[Oletros]

Yes I do.

It won't download music that you have not upload yourself. This isn't a problem on my old android phones. Maybe it is just a bug with the first release?

I have test both songs I uploaded and songs that I didn't originally uploaded. It will only download music I uploaded.

Best,

-Blue

Then it has to be a bug because the app description say that

 

[cateye]

iTunes Match is $25/year. With that you get all your music for free in the cloud and iTunes Radio becomes add free and is very much a pandora approach. At $10/month for Google, i would say you have done something wrong in your calculations. By my account, to take full advantage of Google you need to pay $120/per year, where with iTunes match you get it for 80% less.

For $10 a month, Google Music includes the ability to stream any song in Google's music store, not just the ones you already own and upload (making it like Spotify—complete access to all music). If you aren't hung up on "owning" music, this is a much better value than paying $9.99 for every album you want.

But, if all you want is a Pandora-like Internet Radio experience and the ability to base the music you already own in the Cloud, then yes, Apple's service offers everything you need for much less.

 

[buklawu]

Macbook Pro Retina support

The music manager app for mac doesn't seem to support retina display, i wonder if google done that by purpose of accident? hah just saying Seems good so far tho...

 

[MRU]

One device, just like spotify.

Actually it's more (5 devices I think). I can play on my phone, tablet and Mac all at same time unlike Spotify.

 

[BlueGoldAce]

Actually it's more (5 devices I think). I can play on my phone, tablet and Mac all at same time unlike Spotify.

Interesting.

If I attempt to play on two devices for two long it will shut one off.

This is in regards to music I am listening to thorough subscription.

 

[thedeejay]

Canada gets shafted again... Yay

 

[seecoolguy]

You don't need to give them any money. You can upload 20,000 songs and stream them for free. Premium features cost money, which is also the case on android.

there is an issue with this upload feature that I've found, I have iTunes Match and also decided to "backup" my music on google's service. The problem I run into when I re-download my iTunes Music to my Mac so I can sync a playlist for my iPods (yes I still have a few of those) Google's Play service tends to double and triple upload the song to their service, so it seems to get pretty messy pretty quickly.

one feature I like is that at times I'll buy a new song like.. "What the fox say" (its for the kids). and my iTunes will tell me there are not enough genius matches to create a playlist, but Google's instant-mix works more often...

btw, I download the app, and my music is available (I do not pay for the all access music feature). and sound quality is great, and my songs are instantly available vs other apps (gMusic I'm looking at you).

----------

Interesting.

If I attempt to play on two devices for two long it will shut one off.

This is in regards to music I am listening to thorough subscription.

I'll test that when I get home.

 

[MRU]

Interesting.

If I attempt to play on two devices for two long it will shut one off.

This is in regards to music I am listening to thorough subscription.

Strange. Yeah I'm all access subscriber too and can play without it cutting off, and likewise this is subscriber content not content I've uploaded myself.

Wonder if different regions have different policy ???

 

[BlueGoldAce]

Strange. Yeah I'm all access subscriber too and can play without it cutting off, and likewise this is subscriber content not content I've uploaded myself.

Wonder if different regions gave different policy ???

US here.

Also i can't seem to download music that I listen to but didn't upload. Have you had any luck?

 

[2457282]

Can you play any song you want when you want with iTunes Radio? Google All access is like Spotify not like Pandora

You get all your music in the cloud for $0 a year with Google Play music. The $10 a month adds Spotify like features, and unlimited skip radio.
You are correct that to take full advantage of everything Google Play music offers you would cost $120 a year, but that gives you everything iTunes match does plus the functionality of spotify which would cost $145 a year ($25 for iTunes match and $120 for Spotify)

I am sure that there are situations where this makes sense so I will give that point. However, in my case, if I know the song and I want to play it, I select it from my personal collection in the iCloud (currently about 15,000 songs). I use the radio to hear new music which I dont know. In this case pandora like is perfect for me. And he Apple approach is cheaper and gives me the ability to buy anything I like. If you have a small collection of music or none at all, but you know the song you want to hear then Spotify is probably a better option -- I used it once and hated all the #$%! commercials and gave up on it.

An interesting side note -- I had the iPhone 4s 64gig, but thanks to the iCloud I moved down to the iPhone 5s 32gig. If they ever do unlimited photos in iCloud I may be able to go to 16gig

 

[Frankied22]

Some of you people need to seriously understand the difference between this and iTunes Radio. I am so tired of people spewing wrong information or bashing Google just because it's a Google App. First things first,

-Google Music is a FREE cloud storage for your local music. It is akin to iTunes Match, except it is free and lets you access you music in a browser or Android/iOS device. It even plays nicely with iTunes. Once you set up the music manager it will automatically scan your iTunes library and upload all the music. Any changes you make later down the road will also be uploaded.

-Google Music All Access is Google's subscription service that is $9.99 (or $7.99 if you signed up early) and is akin to Rdio, Spotify, or MOG. It is not a competitor to iTunes Radio although it does have a Radio feature like Pandora or iTunes Radio. Basically, All Access gives you access to stream any song that is available in the Google Play Store at any time ad-free. It also lets you add albums or songs to your library of uploaded music so it is all in one place. If you unsubscribe obviously all the music you added that wasn't your own will disappear. It also has recommendations like Rdio that shows you music you may be interested in. The Android/iOS app will let you download music to your device whether it is your own music or All Access music. You just go into the album and there will be a small orange downward arrow. Tap it to "Pin" the music locally on your device. You can try All Access for a month for free.

So as you can see these two services are completely different. iTunes Match is nice for local music but it cost $25 a year and will only let you access you music from an Apple Device. iTunes Radio is simply Pandora that has access to all the music available on iTunes. It doesn't let you pick what song you want to listen to. It just generates playlists based off an Artist, Album, or Song. It let's you skip songs a few times and it has ads unless you have iTune s Match. If you are someone who just flips on a radio playlist then yes, iTunes Radio is nice. But if you are someone who wants to listen to a specific song or album at any times, wants to build playlists, etc. then obviously you want a subscription service such as All Access, Rdio, Spotify, or MOG. If you want that but you only listen to music on your computer then you can probably suffice with Spotify's free service. If you want all that music on the go then you will have to pay monthly.

 

[BlueGoldAce]

I contacted google support.

It looks like the ability to download music (subscription, not music you uploaded) for offline play will come in future updates....

Disappointing, but at least it is here.

 

[Frankied22]

I contacted google support.

It looks like the ability to download music (subscription, not music you uploaded) for offline play will come in future updates....

Disappointing, but at least it is here.

I am able to download music I don't own to my device. I have tried it with a couple different albums that are not my own and it worked fine.