
Google’s Music Beta first look: it’s miserable - ssclafani
http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/10/google-music-miserable/
======
Kylekramer
So, the tl;dr of the miserableness followed by my commentary:

1\. Have to use the Music Manager to upload music; no drag and drop (Yup, that
sucks)

2\. Somewhat buggy phone app (Sucks)

3\. Looks too much like Grooveshark (Uh, I guess? Only so many ways to skin a
cat and make a music player)

4\. Caches music, and they banned Kongregate for caching Flash games (This is
a pretty big stretch, especially since the linked article doesn't even come
close to supporting the claim caching was the reason for the ban)

5\. It uploads files from iTunes, and Apple has shown a history of disliking
that with Palm (A: Who cares if Apple gets mad about what I do with my music I
legally purchased B: There is a pretty big difference between uploading music
you've purchased from iTunes and iTunes allowing non-Apple products to sync
with it)

Seems like sensational linkbait that has a few legit complains and a lot of
filler.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Well the meta comment is that nearly every single product Google has 'shipped'
lately has been met with 'man this sucks.' followed by a period of iteration,
followed by either its death (Wave), zombieness (Reader), or appreciation
(Docs). I don't know if the "press" (and I use that term lightly because the
community is a mix of professionals and amateurs) really has a process for
dealing with this sort of release cycle. People like game magazines with their
deadlines were accustomed to getting early beta/late alpha stage games so that
they could have a review in print when the game shipped 12 - 16 weeks later
but even then there were some interesting failures (when they published a
review for a game that ended up never shipping).

For me, the interesting thing about Google's music service (other than Amazon
totally toasted them in the execution of this strategy :-) is that they are
wading into lawyer infested waters knowingly. That makes me wonder if we're
coming to the 'end times' when folks can see the rights strategies (for music
at least) finally settling into some new normal for the 21st century.

Now I don't doubt muscians could still shoot themselves in the wallet like
authors did with the book deal [1] but they are a bit more willing to taste
test this new world.

[1] [http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/03/google-books-
decision-p...](http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/03/google-books-decision-
privacy-concerns-are-real)

~~~
jsdalton
> nearly every single product Google has 'shipped' lately

Lately? Google Reader was released in 2005 and Google Docs in 2006. Docs was
actually built largely from acquired components (XL2Web, Writely, Upstartle).

You probably have a good point in there somewhere, but you need to select
better examples to illustrate it.

------
marcusbooster
For what it's worth, LifeHacker liked it:
[http://lifehacker.com/5800500/first-look-at-google-music-
our...](http://lifehacker.com/5800500/first-look-at-google-music-our-favorite-
features-in-googles-cloud-music-player)

~~~
willifred
From the Lifehacker review:

> It's also worth noting that they're looking to crack down on piracy, so
> depending on how well it works and how much of your music is illegal, that
> could be a deal killer for some.

This would be a deal killer for me and nearly everyone I know.

~~~
drivebyacct2
How can Google possibly know whether the files you upload were bought legally
or not?

~~~
zmmmmm
I would think the music industry isn't past seeding P2P networks with
watermarked files and then suing Google to get a court order to scan people's
collections en masse.

------
navs
Ah dang, U.S. only. Sometimes it feels like the internet is only for
Americans.

~~~
guelo
It seems like this type of thing provides huge openings for foreign
entrepreneurs. See a successful US-only service and copy it, letting the
Americans take all the risk of proving it in the market! Why don't we see more
of that?

~~~
jrwoodruff
Because it's not the service controlling this, it's the copyright holders. Any
service (netflix, hulu, et. al.) that wants to play nice with those in the
copyright business have to limit their distribution per whatever licensing
agreement they have.

------
dendory
Google Music is not available in your country.

Pretty much says it all as far as I'm concerned.

------
jsz0
If you have a fairly reliable Internet connection it's worth looking into
something like Subsonic instead. You run it but you get tons more features,
storage, more privacy, clients for basically every device -- even ones without
Flash support, and it's mostly trivial to install and configure. Not for
everyone of course.

~~~
dave1010uk
Subsonic looks good.

My setup is a sshfs mount on my phone (Debian-based Nokia N900) from my home
"media server". Some day I'd like to set up a VPN & a UPnP/DLNA server to do
video transcoding.

------
yanw
It's a testimony to the effectiveness of link-baiting when pretty much the
only bad review gets the most attention.

Other than the fact that some of their grievances are unrelated to the actual
functionality of the product, they don't seem to realize that it's an invite-
only _beta_.

