The promise of Google Music

Gizmodo's Mat Honan on Google's just-announced music service: "Essentially, you're taking the island of music on your computer and dropping it in the cloud. But it's still an island. It's still a self-contained unit. You have to manage it yourself. It won't grow unless you manually add tracks to it. There's no serendipitous discovery. No social component. No Pandora or Last.fm-style suggestions that drop tracks you've never heard before, but already love. Google isn't offering you a vast, new catalog. It's just offering to hold your shit for you."

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Mal O’Nine

Well…yeah? I mean, It was supposed to just enable music access across multiple devices. Not sell you music or let you explore other people’s music lockers in the sky. How can one complain it isn’t something it didn’t promise to be?
- dogcow
  
  Actually if you read what Google said about they were attempting with the service, you’d realize they did want some pretty cool stuff, but were stymied (for now) by the record companies, but they seem to have some hope they’ll come to terms eventually. So while it wasn’t an explicit promise of “more”, it was definitely something Google has in mind.
  - turn_self_off
    
    Indeed. It got the ability to recommend music based on what your playing at the time (pick the first song, and the system will pick up to 20 more of the same “style” by actually analyzing the music).
    
    As such they likely want to offer something similar to spotify or pandora, but could not get the labels to agree on some kind of pricing system before the event. So it could be that the execs went ahead and released what they could release without the need for label approval.
    
    Google have now played their hand, it is up to the labels to call, fold or para-dropping lawyers.
Anonymous

So… it does what it says on the tin, then? Doesn’t seem like much of a disappointment to me.
eain

Why is this a PROBLEM? As far as I’m concerned, it’s an AWESOME idea: I can listen to my whole damn catalog (okay, 20 gigs worth anyway, but that’s more than what I’ve actually got sorted anyway).

It’s this exact kind of thing that’s a big part of why I stopped reading the gawker network: They seem to hate EVERYTHING. Unless they’re tearing something down and complaining about it, they don’t seem to be happy. (I can’t recall a single one of the reviews on io9 that I agreed with, and when they mercilessly cut at Alfred Bester, I was done with listening to any of their opinions/reviews.) Hell, it seems to be a big part of an awful lot of media these days- “If we say we like something, we won’t be considered seriously, so let’s just say everything sucks!”

Bah. Humbug. Get off my lawn. ;)
- blissfulight
  
  Gawker is the equivalent of 5 o’clock news (Murder, Rape, Fraud at 5) for the younger set.
Anonymous

I just do NOT believe that my “shit” will be minimally protected on the cloud from DMCA takedowns, rights verifications, and other obtrusive pissing matches between huge corporations bent on screwing me over. When it comes to corporate datasets, work stuff, great, but my stuff is frikkin MINE and I don’t trust Google or Amazon or indeed any agent to be as protective of my digital stuff as I am. So why hand it over at all?

[gazes lovingly at 2TB RAID drive on desktop, sighs]
- Anonymous
  
  @Anon #7 “I just do NOT believe that my “shit” will be minimally protected on the cloud” It is not your shit it is a COPY of your shit. Unles you are dumb enough to delete the original and your local backup.
Anonymous

It’s only available in the US of A. Shame.
SamSam

Wow, this actually sounds pretty f-ing sweet.

Perfect synchronicity between devices. Listen on as many computers as I like (I assume that means it will be easy for my whole family to listen to the music that was stored on my computer). Doesn’t take up space on my phone except for the music I’ve recently listened to or select to save.

No damn iTune account issues. No scratching my ear with my elbow to get my iTunes to synch with Android. No losing my music when I switch computers.

I’m in.
millie fink

How’s it work with I-Tunes? Can I go across computers with it? Cuz I hate how I can’t get my I-Tunes material on another computer.
Zadaz

It’s not for a lack of trying. Google’s been talking for years with Big Music with no success. Big Music would rather people get their music as god intended, from wax cylinders made from Thomas Edison’s ear wax delivered by the secret service.
aldasin

“No social component”
I’m not knocking social media, I get a lot out of it, but for chrissakes, does everything have to bend to the trend? Does every friggin’ thing need to be socialized and cross posted?
Maybe I want some shit of my own that nobody else gets access to or even knows about. Is that a crazy concept?
Enough with the digital diarrhea already.
floraldeoderant

When I first read it, I thought it was a Google rep saying it. “Google isn’t offering you a vast, new catalog. It’s just offering to hold your shit for you.” has to be in the running for best advertisement technique ever.
legotech

Wait, so Google will hold my purse for me while I go try on new stuff??? Why is this bad?
JC

Good! I don’t want a vast new catalog and I don’t want social recommendations. I just want Google to hold my shit for me. Win-win! Seriously, I don’t see the point of a social media component. I don’t remember the last time Pandora or any such service recommended something that actually blew my mind. Or even something I actually sought out and listened to a second time. When trying to guess my taste, they always miss the mark. But the idea of getting to store my music in the cloud and have access to it wherever, brilliant. Sign me up, whether it’s Google, Amazon, whoever can do it better or cheaper, I’m in.
Egypt Urnash

I don’t see what the problem is, if I want to listen to stuff I know I like I can access my entire library on my phone now (once I get an invite and upload my stuff), if I want to hear something new I can start up Pandora. From what I hear it’ll sync fairly transparently between iTunes on my Mac laptop and my Android phone. I don’t have to set up a server and leave it running to be able to hear anything I own whenever I have a net connection.

Admittedly I came into that article annoyed because Gizmodo’s ungodly redesign decided to ghost out the text, put a loading spinner up, and load some other damn article the first time I loaded the page.

Maybe eventually they’ll add some social/suggestion stuff, but man, being able to hear your entire collection without having to play sysadmin is going to be nice.
staticvars

Oh come on, you honestly don’t think they will have relevant ads for music similar to what you like? They will do it and make money on it.
- Dorbacho
  
  If anyone’s looking for a Google Music Beta invite, I found a blog giving them out for free. I figured that the waiting list would be too long, so I tried the blog out, and got my invite about an hour later. Nice.
  
  I don’t know if they have any remaining invites, but if you want to try your luck here’s the site:
  
  http://freemusicbetainvites.com.nu
txhoudini

Don’t blame Google or Amazon for your complaints about the cloud solutions they have come up with. Blame the record companies who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
tyger11

“Yo, those aren’t even mine, man. Those belong to my 10 million friends.”
- Google