Maybe the Galaxy Nexus does have an SD slot

[rezeew]

I would. Without hesitation.
I really don't like total reliance on cloud solutions; partly because my commute is 98% out of coverage area (on the subway), partly because of data caps, partly because the cloud is useless to me when roaming, and partly because getting my music onto the cloud in the first place is a giant pain in the ass.

Everything else you mention here is a good point, but getting the music onto the cloud being a pain? Do you not have it all on one computer? Or is your home internet upload speed really slow?

I have Google Music Manager on the seven-year-old eMac that houses all my music, and it could not have been easier. Install it, check back a few hours later, and there's all my music. Granted, I have FIOS at home with good upload speeds, but it was basically like it asking "DO YOU WANT ALL YOUR MUSIC ON HERE?" and me saying yes and that's it.

I hated having to plug in every time I wanted to add new music. But I also have coverage during my commute and am grandfathered into unlimited data. So I understand where you're coming from on that stuff.

 

[Deleted User]

I have FIOS at home with good upload speeds...

Gah, see, you had to go and say that, and now I have to hate you....

I'd kill for FIOS right now. Verizon's wired much of the surrounding area but our street seems to be right at the center of an ever-dwindling FIOS void. Sadly I'm stuck with Time Warner cable and their embarrassingly bad 768kbps upstream for now. (Seriously, that s&*t is painful.)

Admittedly I'm uploading a lot of music... 60+ gigs (of CD rips alone, and I still have a lot to rip). But my calculations say that's 8+ days of solid uploading. And then people wonder why we roll our eyes when we complain at the lack of microSD slot on the Nexus and they offer "the cloud" as the end-all-be-all storage solution.

As much as I hate to admit it, Apple's the only company that has really thought this through. The advantage of iTunes in the Cloud? You don't have to upload anything they can match from their own catalog (provided you're ok using their iTunes Plus AAC format/bitrate). All these other companies are busy pushing the cloud as the next big thing, while even the downstream aspect still has its problems; but apparently they're completely out of touch with the average upstream broadband upstream rate, because half the problem can be getting your content into the cloud in the first place.

 

[RichSz]

Everything else you mention here is a good point, but getting the music onto the cloud being a pain? Do you not have it all on one computer? Or is your home internet upload speed really slow?

I have Google Music Manager on the seven-year-old eMac that houses all my music, and it could not have been easier. Install it, check back a few hours later, and there's all my music. Granted, I have FIOS at home with good upload speeds, but it was basically like it asking "DO YOU WANT ALL YOUR MUSIC ON HERE?" and me saying yes and that's it.

I hated having to plug in every time I wanted to add new music. But I also have coverage during my commute and am grandfathered into unlimited data. So I understand where you're coming from on that stuff.

I work in a place where I spend a lot of time in a software lab where cellular reception is spotty to miserable. I've never had to pick and choose what I can listen to before, I just load the device with my mainstays and swap in and out other albums as I see fit. I don't want to worry about what I have on the phone, I just want the freedom to listen to my tunes without concern about space requirements.

With Verizon implementing data caps, this should be a concern to anyone switching over to them. For those of us grandfathered in, I hope we never lose our unlimited data or streaming those albums we already own could get expensive.

Not everyone has the same use case so I get that for some streaming is the way to go. I'm not a fan of limited options which is why I chose Android and considered the GNex in the first place. Don't fence me in!