Google Music Beta

[tcat007]

I got my invite a few days ago. Took about 40 hours to upload 2500 songs. I've been enjoying it, mostly on my PC at work, but today buffering seems a bit messed up. Getting a lot of short pauses during playback, annoying. Not sure if it's related to other stuff I'm doing on the PC (don't think so, only using 5% CPU load).

I like the "Instant Mixes", don't really need my imported playlists, just pick a song and it does a decent job of creating an enjoyable playlist. Crap, getting a lot of stop/start right now. Maybe Google servers are overloaded with "everyone" uploading 2000-20000 songs!

Wish list:
1. Change your initial genre categories.
2. Time length total of Playlist.
3. Auto dup deletion
4. Mini-player (PC)
5. Fix buffering

Buffering really badly right now, song stopping for 10-30 seconds!

 

[fldude99]

On my Captivate, google music doesn't recognize music that is on my external SD card. If it happened to upload then it sees it in the cloud but not on the device. Anybody else get this?

 

[Mostly Harmless]

The lack of playlists is really killing me. Amazon does upload playlists. Google Music does not. To me this is where Google Music falls apart. Amazon doesn't have all my music 'cuz I don't have enough space. Google Music does. However Google Music has none of my playlists and I'm not motivated enough to create all 10-12 of them from scratch all over again. I want to just pick a playlist, hit shuffle all and go to town. Amazon doesn't have the easiest way to do this either to be fair though.

What did you use to make your playlist? Google Music uploaded all my playlist from itunes.

 

[ValerieAnne]

I'm still waiting for my invite. Signed up right when signup started.

 

[tcat007]

I uploaded all from my PC (which was also on my phone). My Optimus seems to see everything "in the cloud" and stream if I have a connection. If there's no connection, free songs are grayed out, but it sees everything on SD and plays from there.

Anyone else have a lot of buffering problems today? At least every other song had drop outs about every few seconds, most of the afternoon for me.

On my Captivate, google music doesn't recognize music that is on my external SD card. If it happened to upload then it sees it in the cloud but not on the device. Anybody else get this?

 

[Footer]

Anyone else having problems with your phone not updating playlists? All of my playlists were uploaded from iTunes to the web version, however, the playlists are not updating on my phone. Even if I force a sync, still no go.

 

[A.Nonymous]

I don't use iTunes 'cuz it's bloated and I'm bitter at Apple about how they behaved when my iTunes account got hacked.

I pointed Google Music at my music folder. All my music is there. None of my playlists are.

 

[jerofld]

It uploads iTunes playlists? Ugh...I hate iTunes...it's worse than a virus on the computer.

 

[KenG10]

A technical problem:

Does the player on the phone tend to repeat songs for anyone else? Even though it is not set to repeat?

Question on the "Instant Mix" option:

How does it determine the songs to add to the mix? Does it use a "Pandora like" algorithm to find songs similar to your chosen song? It doesn't just make a random selection from all of your music, does it?

So far so good! I got 2,000 tracks up there.

 

[Valiant Cookie]

On my captivate, I deleted all music off my phone then just pinned what I want back from google music app, can I find the files on my phone through a file manager app or are they impossible to get to?

Also a problem I had, after connecting my phone via usb to upload some photos, I going google music re-pinning all my music to my phone, anyone know how to fix/make sure that never happens again?

 

[sitlet]

On my captivate, I deleted all music off my phone then just pinned what I want back from google music app, can I find the files on my phone through a file manager app or are they impossible to get to?

If they have already been downloaded, then yes, they have to be on the memory card somewhere.

 

[MJM128]

If they have already been downloaded, then yes, they have to be on the memory card somewhere.

They're in your sd card under

/SDcard/android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music/

The only problem is, other music players seem to not find music in this folder, and the file names don't go into a folder by artist/album/ and then the filename is the name of the song. The song names are just "random" numbers.

 

[Steven58]

still waiting

 

[Choirgirl21]

I just got my invite today! Can't wait to get home to upload my music and try it out. Not sure how I'm going to feel though once I'm hooked and then they start charging for it.

 

[bik2101]

what kind of data caps are in place for this? and how is the streaming? i know i've tried one similar app in the past - audiogalaxy or something like that, and it would skip quite a bit so i just decided to forego that and stick with my ipod but if this works well or amazon cloud and its able to access all my music, it would be pretty awersome

 

[amarryat]

what kind of data caps are in place for this? and how is the streaming?

None yet.

I have only really used it once, for about 45 minutes at the gym and listened to the free stuff they give you.

I normally stream TuneIn Radio, or Pandora or Slacker via 3G at the gym. They all skip or hiccup occasionally. Google Music was flawless.

 

[Stealthman]

Finally got my invite, so far it's very cool

 

[AlexNC]

They're in your sd card under

/SDcard/android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music/

The only problem is, other music players seem to not find music in this folder, and the file names don't go into a folder by artist/album/ and then the filename is the name of the song. The song names are just "random" numbers.

This is my only complaint with Google Music. I wish it would organize my pinned music into folders with real names ... artist/album/track. Other than that, it has been exactly what I was hoping for.

QUESTION:
One thing I love about Google Music on my phone is the ability to pin/download music. This allows us to play the 'pinned' music even when there is no 3G or WIFI service. The way I manage my offline music is through a playlist I made called "My Favorites". I have this playlist pinned, so anytime I add new music to it, it will automatically download when I am connected to WIFI. The question I have is ... what happens if I removed songs from the pinned playlist? Will they be removed from my phone? Or do they stay on my phone? I am hoping they are removed. I would hate for my SD card to get filled up with songs that I don't care to be available when I am offline.

UPDATE
It seems that unpinning music or removing songs from a pinned playlist does indeed remove them from the SD card! Awesome. Google has done a super job with this app. I can't wait to see it continue to evolve.
http://www.droid-life.com/2011/05/26/google-music-app-updated-songs-can-now-be-deleted-from-sd-card/

 

[fldude99]

Any way to turn off the "free" song download thing? It's like they re-spawn after deleting

 

[digitalscorpion]

After DL'ing Google Music App the stock music player/app is gone. Sound right?

I can view both SD music and sync'd music.. but where is the option to delete anything? Even music on my SD, I cant seem to delete/edit thru the Google Music App.

 

[AlexNC]

After DL'ing Google Music App the stock music player/app is gone. Sound right?

I can view both SD music and sync'd music.. but where is the option to delete anything? Even music on my SD, I cant seem to delete/edit thru the Google Music App.

My phone did not replace the stock Music app.

As for song deletion, songs automatically delete when you unpin them.

 

[jerofld]

Any way to turn off the "free" song download thing? It's like they re-spawn after deleting

Did you delete the songs from your album on music.google.com?

 

[digitalscorpion]

interesting. My stock music app is nowhere to be found.. not in app tray, and shortcut on homescreen is gone also.

I dont have any songs "pinned", so how would unpinning accomplish anything? I may be misunderstanding this Pin thing.. sorry.

 

[A.Nonymous]

This playlist thing is pissing me off. I can't get it to work for the life of me. I went through and imported all my playlists into Windows Media Player. Then I told Google Music to upload stuff out of my WMP library. It uploaded all of my playlists except the two I use the most. I see both of these playlists in WMP and both are fully populated. I see only one of them in Google Music and it has one song in it. The other one I don't see at all. Some of my other playlists seem the same way. I see some that are fully populated. Others only have one or two songs in them. In WMP, all of them show up fully populated. This is insanely frustrating.

 

[jerofld]

interesting. My stock music app is nowhere to be found.. not in app tray, and shortcut on homescreen is gone also.

I dont have any songs "pinned", so how would unpinning accomplish anything? I may be misunderstanding this Pin thing.. sorry.

I think he misinterpreted what you wanted to do. So to make sure I have it straight:

You want to delete the music you had on your phone before you installed GMusic that resides on your SD card?

If so, it's simple. You (most likely) have a file browsing program on your phone. Mine was called "Files". If you don't, there are many in the Market. Astro, ES File, AndroXplorer, etc. Any of those will work. Most have free variants that will do what you want.

So, now that we can see the contents of your SD card, you have to find the music and delete it. I recommend using search for *.mp3 or *.<format you use> if you don't use MP3. AndroXplorer has this feature, not sure about Astro or ES (but I'm certain they do) or search for the song names. Then go to the folder where they are and delete.