Google Music

[wormywyrm]

Hey guys, has anyone thought about trying Google Music Beta? Has anyone gotten an invite? What do you think of it?

Do you think it would have much functionality to work along side MediaMonkey? What good add-ons could be made to make it compatible/work well with MediaMonkey?

UPDATE! I got into music beta, see below.

UPDATE 2! Beta is now over and anyone can make an account.

UPDATE 3! I found a way to sync your mediamonkey playlists and music to google music, via WMP... Read more in my post on page 2:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=57831&p=327165#p327165

[nohitter151]

Never heard of it. What is it?

[Lowlander]

It was announced 2 days ago. For more background on this: http://ca.gizmodo.com/search/google%20m ... le%20music

[wormywyrm]

I am pretty excited about it. I think it will really help me with my music woes. I have too many devices and I like to listen to music on all of them, because I am greedy. I have SEVEN DEVICES! Ugh. No wonder I spend so much time sorting my music. I think google music could help big time, like this:

PC -> Google Music -> phone
PC -> Google Music -> Nook
PC -> Google Music -> TV
PC -> Google Music -> Laptop
PC -> iTunes -> iPod Nano
PC -> Car SD Card

It would bring my work down from transferring to 8 devices (counting iPod as two because I have to use iTunes as an intermediate) to transferring to just Google Music, iTunes, iPod (from iTunes), and my Car SD Card. Thats only 4 transfers!! Pretty good.

I hope someone else needs this and the MediaMonkey community works on an easy way to transfer from MM to Google Music. I still find it frustrating to update iTunes database from Media Monkey (its been so long since I've bothered that I cant even remember how), so hopefully it'll be easier with google music.

My Devices:

My Android Phone
I listen to music on this a lot especially when I am out of the house. I attach it to my car when I want to play a specific song because my car has no search function for its SD Card.

My Android-Rooted Nook
I am going to buy one of these this summer. I have been wanting to carry my laptop around less lately because I don't really need it all that much and it distracts me from studying. Nook would be great to study with and less distractions. Plus I love to read. I'm sure I would like to listen to music on it sometimes too.

My Home Computer
This is where I use MM the most to sort my music and add stuff and listen too.

My Laptop
I try to keep Media Monkey on my laptop up to date by copying over the music files and database from my computer on a regular basis, but I am always annoyed because I constantly want to modify my music database on my laptop but when I do I often will forget to transfer it back to my computer and then I end up having to choose between the two which to keep because I made modifications to both my PC and laptops media monkey databases. Ugh! I used to try to keep them synced a number of ways (like scripts and stuff) but I eventually gave up and now I just copy and paste it whenever I feel like it.

My TV
My TV is hooked to an old computer running Windows 7, so I have a copy of media monkey on here but the music on this is always out of date because its a pain to copy over my music and database file. I have used WebMonkey before but I find it frustrating and I had problems using it because I already have several server programs running off my PC (flash game servers, flash media server, and a webserver)

My iPod Nano
I wear this every other day when I work out and sometimes when I go hiking/motorcycle ride/snowboarding. I sync this using iTunes because I really like the genius thing. So it is always out of date because it is a pain to transfer my stuff to itunes, even with some handy media monkey scripts.

My Cars SD Card
My car has an SD Card slot that I try to keep updated with my music. I use Media Monkey to do this and its not too big of a hassle.

[Stigg]

This looks interesting.

[wormywyrm]

Okay so today I got an invite to Google Music Beta like I have been hoping for. Here is my experience:

Really easy to use. It is the absolute barebones of a music player. Reminds me a lot of grooveshark.

I downloaded the music manager, a really simple program. I immediately shared my folder that contains my M3U playlists made by mediamonkey. Google Music does not allow you upload/import playlists. Looking into it further, there is no way to import playlists of any type. There is some talk about importing playlists from iTunes and WMP, but I was unable to figure out how to do that either. Not that I would really want to... I really just want to import my M3U.

So that alone is keeping me from using Google Music right now- At all. But I am really hoping they fix it because I have enjoyed the experience so far.

Using the add on Prism for firefox you can make the music beta into an 'app' that is on your desktop. It makes music beta look and feel like a program on your computer like media monkey. Its cool. So I am going to let my music upload and wait to see if I will ever be able to upload my playlists.

It wouldn't be as big of an issue if it imported MP3 ratings, but google music does not do that either. The rating system is simply thumbs up and thumbs down. It ignores the ratings embedded in the MP3 file upon upload. The only thing it lists as far as information for a song goes is:

Name
Length
Artist
Album
Plays (reset, when uploaded)
Rating (reset, thumbs up or down only)

[wormywyrm]

As far as scripts go it doesnt seem like there would be much scripters for MM could do to improve the synchronization between music beta and MM. I am not sure if music beta has an API or not, but it probably will, so there might be some opportunity for integration for syncing in the future.

[wormywyrm]

I've been using google music again, like this:

MM -> iTunes -> Google Music -> Phone
MM -> iTunes -> Google Music -> Nook
MM -> iTunes -> Google Music -> TV
MM -> iTunes -> Google Music -> Laptop
MM -> iTunes -> iPod Nano
MM -> Car SD Card

I export my M3U playlists from MM and import them into iTunes using some itunes scripts I found online. Then Google Music can read the playlists from iTunes. There seems to be some problems with it though with doubling of playlists, etc... So I do not bother doing it as often as I would like. Maybe once every month or two.

[mjlenox]

I am very interested in this, as well. Being an owner of two Android devices, the Droid X and the Xoom, the Google Music cloud could be the perfect answer for me. There's just one problem currently. MediaMonkey is by far the BEST desktop app for managing your music library, but the Music software that sends my tunes into the Cloud only syncs with Windows Media and iTunes libraries, or a designated file location. I can point it to the folder on my media hub where I keep all of my music, and that's fine, but literally everything I listen to is from an Auto Playlist in MediaMonkey. Thus, I don't have any of my playlists in the cloud unless I switch to Windows Media or iTunes, which is the last thing I want to do.. A solution for Google Music to sync with MediaMonkey playlists, including the Auto ones, is the only thing left to make me really happy.

[Guest]

I have tried it and it is awsome...I like it very much. Go Google

[ryanasr]

this sounds pretty cool, isn't apple doing something similiar?

[glalaksen44]

Anybody has an extra invite???

[TulsaMJ]

As of yesterday, no invite needed. Google Music is out of beta, and they've added an iTunes-ish music store! Tracks bought in the music store can be played through Google Music or downloaded to your computer.

[mrmeathead99]

Anyone have any more invites? I want to try this google music beta. Or is it open now?

[KEP]

Anyone have any more invites? I want to try this google music beta. Or is it open now?

It's open. All you need is a Google account.

http://music.google.com