My Google Music sucks with 3G. How's your's?

[Shamrock13]

Well, essentially what happens is it takes about 5-20 minutes for a 4 minute song to load and actually play. It always happens regardless of what I do. The only time it's quick is over Wi-Fi/4G. 3G is so excruciatingly slow. It's to the point I'm about to switch over to Amazon MP3 because that loads instantly or at least buffers for about 10-15 seconds then plays the WHOLE song. I have so many stutters and buffers during a song on Google Music. Pandora and Spotify are the same. They play almost instantly as well.


Anyway, is anyone else having any kind of problems like this? It's definitely not a network issue. I've tried it on 4 phones now: Samsung Fascinate, Droid Charge, LG Enlighten, and now this. Anyone know what is truly causing this issue or if it's just a bad hand-off when it comes to 3G and Google Music? That's what I'm leaning towards and I've emailed Google Music support, but they don't like to reply.

 

[babyhuyx]

hmm....I actually have no problems with streaming with google music. It streams way faster for me compared to pandora or slacker. 3g or 4g. I hardly ever get stutters or middle of song buffers.

 

[Dubbin1]

I have never had an issue with google music and 3g. Even on my OG Droid it played just fine.

 

[kyler13]

Your 3g connection sucks, to be perfectly honest. When it first came out, I tried Google Music on my Incredible. Tried streaming music on my drive to/from work and experienced the same intermittent issues with the long pauses so I abandoned it in favor of my stored music. Now that I have a 4G phone, I'm back to streaming music (albeit with Amazon). I don't think Verizon's 3G network is suited for cloud services. I believe that some people are fine on 3G if the conditions are right (close proximity to a tower, non-loaded cell, and/or fixed location), but even in a well covered area, moving between cells exposes the problem because your data transfer rates will always dip low enough to fall behind. Streaming services like Pandora use compressed data for efficiency, but as I understand it, Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player basically pull your songs from the server as-is.

Edit: I half misunderstood your post. It may be something with Google Music exclusively. I know that Amazon will cache your music locally once it pulls it down. Maybe that's why it plays better with their services?

 

[spy178]

Yeah, I'm having the same issue on 3G with google music..sucks because it would be nice to just stream from my car, but taking upwards of 4 minutes for a single song to load with full 3G service won't cut it.

 

[clb2196]

Mine is fine. The only place I ever have an issue is our one dead zone on the Mass Pike, but I've lost reception there with every phone I've had (and funnily enough, it's right near the huge Verizon 4G billboard lol).

I stream Google Music over 3G and 4G all the time, it always loads instantly (in fact the NFC tag in my car dock toggles the song on/off and it always starts as soon as I dock the phone) and it hardly ever buffers at all. Never had any issues with it on my 3G Droid2, either.

I actually accidentally left my phone set to 3G only our whole Christmas trip, so for 4 days I had maybe 12 hours or so I was streaming music over 3G only, with absolutely no buffering and no skips or anything.


Do you have unlimited data? If so, you should definitely have Google Music caching your music. Music > Settings > Cache music. I always have that set, maybe that's the issue?

 

[Squintz82]

Been using Google Music since beta on 3g and never had any issues. Sounds like a coverage issue.

 

[Shamrock13]

Edit: I half misunderstood your post. It may be something with Google Music exclusively. I know that Amazon will cache your music locally once it pulls it down. Maybe that's why it plays better with their services?

The thing is Google Music caches to the phone as well. I have that option checked. I try and play music, and yet it still stutters. Sometimes when I completely erase the cache and clear data and restart the app anew, it will work. However, I know you might suggest, "well, turn off caching." I've tried that numerous times, and yet, it still causes me nothing but problems.

Yeah, I'm having the same issue on 3G with google music..sucks because it would be nice to just stream from my car, but taking upwards of 4 minutes for a single song to load with full 3G service won't cut it.

Can you do me a favor and try uploading some music to Amazon and see what happens then? I've got about 10 GB on Amazon that I can play from that work flawlessly, but Google Music... man, it just sucks over 3G for me

Do you have unlimited data? If so, you should definitely have Google Music caching your music. Music > Settings > Cache music. I always have that set, maybe that's the issue?

I do have unlimited data. I have that option checked as I said previously. I'm not even sure what's causing it though. It can't be a reception issue due to the fact that I always have 3-4 bars on my Nexus and with that reception, I'm able to stream Spotify and Amazon perfectly fine. It doesn't make sense that Google Music is the cause to my problems.

It's like I can't even take advantage of the unlimited data when I'm getting these problems. >_<

 

[babyhuyx]

Don't know what to tell you honestly im on west coast here both my phone and my gf phone stream from Google music fine...maybe the area you live doesn't like Google lol

 

[eljusticiero67]

I am having the same problem, and its infuriating me to no end. I dont think its connectivity issues, as I am able to tether my phone to my laptop, and stream music from the google music and amazon cloud player WEBSITES fine... FROM MY PHONES 3G CONNECTION!

So there must be something else, as I imagine the amount of concurrent data streams on a computer would make music more likely to stall than on a phone.

Ive tried reinstalling a hundred times, clearing caches etc. nothing seems to work! this is one of the main reasons why i got a smartphone!!!


CM7 Froyo (BTW)