“After a year of (failed) discussions with the labels, Google [has finally launched] a music service at Google I/O — and it’s very similar to Amazon’s, which also doesn’t have approval from the labels,” Jason Kincaid reports for TechCrunch. “I spoke with Google’s Jamie Rosenberg, head of digital content and strategy for Android, who confirmed the news. And while he says that Google will improve on Amazon’s offering in many ways, one month from now I’m guessing it will look significantly less impressive.”
“After signing up and installing the native app, you’ll be prompted to start uploading your music library. Nobody likes having to upload gigabytes of content. It may not be difficult — Google’s client will actually upload the songs you’re most likely to listen to first to minimize the pain — but there’s still the mental hurdle of letting the upload run for a full day or two,” Kincaid reports. “You won’t actually be able to purchase any music through Google’s service. This will not be a huge deal (if you leave Google’s desktop client running in the background it will automatically upload any new songs to the cloud) but it’s still frustrating.”
MacDailyNews Take: Frustrating hurdles. Fragmandroid settlers will love it – until Apple’s unveils their far more elegant, far more comprehensive solution and the settlers see what else they’re missing, of course.
Kincaid reports, “Apple is rumored to be announcing its competing cloud service at WWDC in June, likely with full cooperation from the labels — which could make all the difference. Instead of having to upload your thousands of MP3s, iTunes may be able to simply check your (much smaller) database file and recreate it online using a central repository of music (in other words, no huge uploads)… I can’t imagine Apple launching a service that tells its users to sit back and wait a couple of days. Instead, you’ll fire up the new version of iTunes, check a box saying you want your iPhone and iPad to have access to all of your content, and bam — users won’t have to learn what an online locker is, their stuff will just be where they want it.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
Google to launch ‘Music Beta by Google’ without licensing from music labels – May 10, 2011
Anyone trusting too much to Google is making a big mistake. As with Facebook…
Who cares about a music locker? That wasn’t even the big news at I/O this year! Screw the music locker, its lame, will be lame from google and will be lame from Apple. Its a glorified ‘shared folder’. pfft. next.
The real news from I/O was Android 3.1, which will bring the Phone and Tablet versions together and new APIs such as Android Accessories which provide a unified API and protocol for communications and control of a device from an Android Device.
Android@Home was the other big announcement, which is a home automation framework for Android devices.
Those are the cool things that were announced. Screw the music locker! Its not even newsworthy! (except maybe here, where apparently there is this fixation with it).
@Dude
Android@Home is still born. This is what Microsoft tried and failed many years ago. Just like GoogleTV was a lame attempt at raising WebTV from the dead.
I wouldn’t take anything MS tried as a sign of anything in terms of creating a market or making something work!
If that is the grand metric then the whole Tech Industry should just shut down right now!
I wouldn’t give credence to any piss poor Google efforts either. Google sucks pure & simple. There’s no other way around it, they don’t understand what polish means. If you like screwing prostitutes, that’s your prerogative but the rest of us prefer stuff with higher standards.
How’s this any different/better from what Amazon gives you already or what you could do yourself with your own private server? Seems like all you’re doing is providing Google with your purchasing habits so they can sell you stuff. Amazon and Google have shown their quite weak hands in this music locker market, so now look to Apple to do it properly. Without the music label support the whole concept is kinda pointless.
“check a box saying you want your iPhone and iPad to have access to all of your content, and bam”
I think he meant, “Boom.” Learn how to “Jobspeak.”
He was speaking Emerilese! : )
That’s perfect for those with iTunes-only content. What about the rest of us with huge, diverse music collections that really just want a digital locker? I don’t want the labels interfering with MY collection.
but there’s still the mental hurdle of letting the upload run for a full day or two
Then there will be the bigger mental hurdle when you get your next bill and find out how far over your data limit you went and how much those overages are going to cost you.
@fuzz504,
He may have just wanted tp play it safe, in case SJ had trademarked “Boom”.
to, not tp.
Reply works really well now. Give it a try. You’ll like it and we will too!
In the keynote, Vic Gundotra says, “Google has hit 100 million Android activations in total. What’s exciting is that we all did it together. 36 OEMs, 215 carriers, 450,000 developers.” iPhone has done over three times that all by itself.
How’s Apple’s locker going to recognize my personally ripped mp3s from vinyl? A waste of time. Get yourself a NAS and keep everything on that, so you’ll be able to access your own music any time you want without having to upload anything. I’m still going to carry an iPod around with my music on it and that’s not going to change
+1 same here
If your iTunes database has a song that’s not recognized it could possibly upload a sample of that song (ala Shazam) and use that to find the recording. But you’re right that iTunes simply won’t have every recording on vinyl and likely never will.
Dont worry, all the Google bitches love to install the Google Desktop software, where Goooooogle tracks everything they do. Its like having a permanent pipe hooked up to ur butt, so Google can rape u 24/7.
I don’t get this at all. How is this any better than having iTunes sync all my music direct to my iPhone/iPad/mac? I have plenty of room on my iPhone for music. Why would I want to stream all my music over a dodgy mobile connection. Not to mention sucking up my monthly data quota. And for sure it’s not going to be instant, not like pulling it from the local storage. Only useful to 3G connected devices as well.
I can see why Google would do it, they don’t have a desktop android client, but why would apple?
I must be missing something.
The music locker is stupid. The cloud doesn’t work right because since the advent of Netflix, the whole damned internet slows down every night. The music locker will make everything worse and solve the problems of very few.
“check a box saying you want your iPhone and iPad to have access to all of your content, and bam”
It’s BOOM, not bam….in “Jobspeak.”
For Android I get it-android devices only have 2Gb of storage out of the box.
For an iPhone with 32Gb, why do I need/want this?
Also, do I really want google having access to my media?
Bad enough they are watching everyone’s surfing habits.
Sure. Until now there are 190 Million iOS users. And counting….
BTW : Except Nerds, I have never encountered a satisfied Android user. Not one. I wonder why?
Must learn sales speak. It was said that there were 400k activations (notice sales numbers are never mentioned or how many users actually using Android), which in sales speak means sales were “smooth”.
My music collection is over 80GB but most of it is stuff I don’t listen to often, the stuff I do I can easily sync to my iPhone and iPad, and I’m not desperate enough to be able to access all my songs every moment of the day using up my data allowance or tying up my connection on whatever device it may be. I just don’t see the appeal of this sort of thing regardless of who it’s from. I tried Spotify and whilst it’s nice and works well, I’m just not that bothered, I stick my iPod on random from a selection of a few thousand songs and I’m good.
In a perfect world with unlimited data transfer speed and allowances then yes it would be a nice convenience, but nothing more than that.
I’m a little confused. Since when did MDN decide to become an ally to the Music Labels? Last I checked, they only stifle innovation and progress.