“Google’s Music Beta is supposed to provide users with a way to access their music anywhere, anytime as easily as physically possible,” Matthew Lynley reports for VentureBeat. “But it’s just not that easy.”
“I’ve spent the past few hours trying to navigate my way through Music Beta and ended up finding new frustrations at nearly every turn,” Lynley reports. “Music Beta in its current form is far from what we’d expect from a Google product— it’s a web of confusing programs without a lot of instruction as to how to actually get to the music you want to hear.”
MacDailyNews Take: Lynley must not have used a lot of Our Lady of Perpetual Beta’s products; many of them are confusing, half-finished hodgepodges.
Lynley reports, “Google is missing a key part of the cloud music puzzle — the ability to re-download songs from that server somewhere out in the cloud onto other devices, removing the need to physically transfer those files.”
“Music Beta can upload files that I’ve purchased on iTunes. I’m not sure how long Apple would let something like this fly, seeing as it is pretty angsty when it comes to other devices and applications synching up with iTunes. The Palm Pre, for example, tried to pretend it was an iPhone in iTunes, and Apple just changed the software every time to block that feature,” Lynley reports. “We’ve contacted Apple for a comment on the subject but haven’t heard back from them yet.”
Lynley reports, “Google hasn’t flopped just yet. After all, this is a closed beta — it’s only available to U.S. users for the time being and there are plenty of kinks to work out. Still, I’m hoping that my next several hours with the service are more exciting than the catastrophe the first few were.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “qka” for the heads up.]
““Music Beta can upload files that I’ve purchased on iTunes. I’m not sure how long Apple would let something like this fly, seeing as it is pretty angsty when it comes to other devices and applications synching up with iTunes”
Not sure how they’re going to control your non-DRM files…
Exactly! Apple also provides API’s so that other devices can sync with iTunes – for example, your CrackBerry.
I was just going to post that. The problem with Palm was that they spoofed the Pre into showing up as an Apple product. The iTunes library is readily accessible using open standards (XML). Apple has approved apps in its store which use the iTunes library. One of which, I totally recommend, AudioGalaxy Mobile.
Thanks for posting the Audio Galaxy tip. I didn’t realize that it was possible to stream music off your iTunes collection. Much cleaner solution than that Google crap.
Really? Seriously? I can’t image why?
Google tries to copy everything Apple does in a way much more annoyingly than Microsoft’s worst efforts but comes up short every time. Is there anything that Google has copied that has come off superior to the original version? You only have to look at the turd that is Android to be able to figure out what kind of whale shit Music Beta will turn out to be. Oh, and it runs on battery sucking Flash too. Larry Page is the new Steve Ballmer.
“it runs on battery sucking Flash too”
SRSLY?!
It’s FLASH based?!
(linky? I read the whole article and didn’t see that mentioned)
And am I to assume most users would be playing their music through mobile devices?
The Wow starts now, whereby “wow” stands for “dead battery”.
Yes, it’s Flash based. Google made it expressly incompatible with the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch although sneakily they made uploading songs from iTunes a cinch. This is an obvious ploy to draw customers away from iOS into the Android fold.
Ooooo.
And I found a link with the mention of FLASH:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/10/google-music-to-stream-20-000-songs-for-free-launches-at-i-o-la/
So they’ve killed off all iOS devices from their potential customer base, and they’ve killed the batteries in the other devices that might be used to run it.
GENIUS!
Yes Flash! Because html5 audio is not ready… I just went to SoundCloud mobile website with my iPad2 and tried to play a 30 minutes mix : fail! Mobile Safari stopped loading at 20 minutes…
Come on, be fair. They had to do something to limit the use of bandwidth considering all the caps.
All of these cloud services are going to go head to head with the providers and their desire to choke off these new services.
“Music Beta in its current form is far from what we’d expect from a Google product— it’s a web of confusing programs without a lot of instruction as to how to actually get to the music you want to hear.”
Lol, but that’s exactly what I expected.
And this is a surprise because…?
I think amazon and google are showing the world exactly how not to do it. Days to weeks of uploading and massive bandwidth consumption before the service is even usable.
This to me clearly points the way to how Apple approaches things different from everyone else.
I imagine apple will use our record of purchases and offer the ability to stream or download anything you have purchased at anytime from anywhere. Simple as that. Done.
They would likely include a wifi only sync function to manage the content on different devices without the need for plugging in to iTunes as we know it now.
Think different right? The other guys just don’t get it. Let’s hope Apple does this the way they do things best.
If not, and it’s the same old deal as the other guys then I can’t say I’m really interested.
I like google competing with apple and failing. I hate google failing, killing the market and putting small tech companies out of business with free crapware.
+1
That’s the real danger with what Google keeps doing – trying to kill consumers’ desire to pay for stuff, so they can waltz in with their ad/spying based business model.
Apple has, in my view, single-handedly revived the market for paid software, thanks to the runaway success of iOS apps, as well as the nice uptick in business Mac app makers are seeing thanks to the Mac App Store.
Judging from Google’s efforts so far, people will thankfully continue to associate most free software with shoddy workmanship & bad user experience. (Yes, there are exceptions, but for the most part building great software takes a lot of work, and you need to pay people to do that work.)
The old adage is still true, folks – you get what you pay for.
Why are they doing this? Apple makes money on the devices, almost nothing on the music. Where does Google make money?
Uploading all your music and letting Google monitor your music = targeted advertising =$
Let’s get one thing straight: Apple may not make huge margins on music/movies/apps, but it certainly makes money on them. A LOT of money, because there are a LOT of sales that don’t involve any packaging, shipping, retail displays, etc.
Does anyone else think it’s completely and utterly dishonest for Amazon and Google to advertise these Cloud storage services as anytime, and anywhere services when they don’t work outside of the US?
Talk about a load of BS. If You can only access these from one single country that sure as hell isn’t EVERYWHERE.