

Google Music now available to everyone in the US - mrsebastian
http://music.google.com?

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brown
I now listen to the majority of my music on Youtube. Most of the songs I want
to listen to are there. For free. And legally.

It kills me that Google, owner of Youtube, would not directly integrate
Youtube and Google Music. I can only assume this is once again a limitation
imposed by the RIAA. Sigh.

~~~
drivebyacct2
I don't know how people listen to music on Youtube. The audio quality on those
videos at less than 720p is unacceptable. Even people that walk around
listening to 128kbps mp3s can tell when I ask them to swtich from 360/480 to
the 720p stream.

~~~
jrockway
I think the non-HD videos actually have monaural sound. When you switch to
720p, you get your stereo back.

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krosaen
I like the artist hub, and streaming / syncing offline of my library. But I
really don't like the absence of a subscription option to listen to whatever I
want. I can't imagine paying nearly the price of one month premium rdio or
spotify service for a single album anymore. If they are going to charge per
album, they really need aggressively low pricing like lala.com did for
"unlimited web plays" (~$1 per album).

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angryasian
the artists hub, and sharing.. are really the killer features of this release.
Also the fact they are allowing artists direct control, like distributing
concerts and any other tracks they'd like to share is a pretty awesome
feature.

~~~
chrisguitarguy
Artist hub is sort of awesome. As classical musician, I'd be limited to
uploading only public domain music. Anything modern would require licensing
agreements, how would Google handle that?

How will they handle things like sampling and/or remixes? Are those considered
original works? (Generally, no)

Not saying artist hub isn't a cool feature, I'm just not sure how cool it is.
More information required. Then again, there are not many classical musicians
interested in using modern distribution technologies.

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darrellsilver
Tried to upload music and received this hilarious message:
<http://yfrog.com/ocygcp>

After trying a 2nd time through the non-wizard interface, it turns out all 72
of my songs on this machine are iTunes DRM'd. Humph.

~~~
blinkingled
I am going through a painful process of spending $25 on iTunes Match, waiting
for it to complete matching, then finding the purchased DRM iTunes tracks,
deleting them and re-downloading them so that I have DRM-free 256Kbps tracks.

That was the cost of not pirating music.

~~~
darrellsilver
Signed up for iTunes Match earlier this week...

Most of the songs in my library are non-drm (mp3) and it still took about 18
hours to do steps 1 & 2 (indexing & ?) across 22k songs. Music is stored on a
(slow) network attached drobo.

The 5100 songs (25%? Crazy!) that aren't already up there are taking another
24 hours but I assume this is bandwidth dependent.

Crucially, this is all happening in the background, hasn't required my
intervention at all, doesn't disrupt using itunes, and once it started
uploading everything that it didn't have to upload was immediately available
on other devices.

A pretty solid experience, IMO.

Anyone know what happens when the library hits 25k songs???

~~~
gbhn
You probably know better than me, but I thought the 25k limit was for songs in
the "uploaded" category (i.e. your 5100 songs). IOW, you would still be far
from the limit.

~~~
darrellsilver
Fingers crossed! Wish I could just find some docs on this...

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DonnyV
So when is Google Music going to be added to the Data liberation page?
<https://plus.google.com/settings/exportdata> I would really hate to have all
my songs be held hostage in Google Music.

~~~
billnapier
You can download all the tracks you purchased from <http://music.google.com/>.

~~~
DonnyV
Yes but what about all of my tracks I uploaded?

~~~
dave5104
Well, you uploaded them in the first place, which means you had a copy at some
point.

Don't delete that copy.

~~~
DonnyV
Well I was hoping to use Google Music as a safe place to keep my music instead
of having to keep them on a hard drive some place.

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semenko
Boy, the Android Music Market sure has some great pricing options!
[https://market.android.com/details?id=album-
Btvootmxvdamb4jr...](https://market.android.com/details?id=album-
Btvootmxvdamb4jrmjvcapcv2dq&feature=top-paid-album)

(Googling for it, it's a multi-disc album that appears to have caused some
parsing issues. Amazon's copy: [http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Complete-Charlie-
Parker-Verve/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Complete-Charlie-Parker-
Verve/dp/B001NS5J0O/) )

~~~
estel
For those of us not in the US, what are they?

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phzbOx
You know the question the VCs always ask: "What if google decided to attack
your market, what would you do?" I guess it's a sad day for a couple of
promising startups.

~~~
superkarn
Or a day your startup got another validation.

~~~
shinratdr
Does anyone have a good example of this actually happening? I can think of
countless small companies that were shuttered soon after a much larger company
horned in on their business.

I can't think of a single example of a company that actually became more
popular and relevant when the same thing happened.

~~~
Codayus
Google and Microsoft have a huuuge list of projects they jumped into, and
failed, leaving the competition stronger than before. All sorts of half-baked
apps and ideas - from Google Knols to Microsoft Frontpage.

(Yeah, okay, Adobe isn't exactly a small company. But they're a lot smaller
than Microsoft, but Dreamworks has consolidated its position, and Microsoft
killed off Frontpage...)

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mindslight
Awesome - yet another way to support those backing SOPA.

~~~
NegativeK
I was particularly amused to see Google and the music execs on stage for a
product announcement on the same day that a Google legal team was Congress's
whipping boy for the SOPA hearing.

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Toddward
I'm extremely interested to see how today's Music announcements will tie into
Google's rumored GDrive plans.

~~~
abraham
I don't see there being that much overlap other then maybe counting towards
storage and maybe uploading using the Drive client.

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JoshTriplett
Following the link took me to a page demanding that I agree to additional
terms of service first, but dragging that window out of the way revealed the
indication that Google Music won't work without Flash, so I didn't bother
going any further. More sites should provide that kind of information before
signup; thanks for that.

Hopefully they'll create a non-Flash version at some point in the future, at
which point I look forward to trying this.

~~~
baby
We've used flash for everything for ages. Hell, if you look at the competition
Deezer is in flash. I know the tendency these days is for HTML5 and against
Flash but really? Aren't you trying to be a hipster here?

~~~
JoshTriplett
We used asbestos for ages too, because it got the job done, and we didn't
bother looking for alternatives to _that_ until we had to.

HTML5 has gained ground against Flash for a reason, and I certainly didn't
choose it for _popularity_. I use and prefer open software and open standards,
and Flash doesn't provide either one.

If the Flash player ever becomes open, I'll probably install it for
convenience, but I'd still use Flashblock and prefer sites based on HTML5 over
sites using Flash.

~~~
magicalist
well, <audio> had _never_ been an advantage html5 has had over flash :) It's
been pretty bad both in spec and especially in the implementations (edit: but
finally improving!)

That said, someone told me they got google music playing in a UIWebView on
iOS, so there must be some fallback mechanism.

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kleiba
Every time I see a cool announcement like this one, I'm painfully reminded
that Germany is 10 years behind in every possible way when it comes to digital
entertainment. I am nor jealous, just really sad.

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sologoub
Love how Chrome popped a warning that not all content on the page is secure,
asking whether to load it or not. Don't load option was recommended... LOL!

~~~
eddieplan9
First, google offers broke browser back button when it was launched [1]. And
now this. Google does not know how to build a good web app; and does not know
how to get search work in Andriod Market. What universe are we living in?

[1] <http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=2471767>

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Qz
It still refuses to show my cloud music (as seen through the web app) on my
phone. I've been using Amazon's Cloud Player instead with no problems.

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majika
Is it still possible to create an account with a US VPN and use it from
elsewhere in the world forever more?

What payment options are available?

~~~
Grufle
Yea, I used Hotspot Shield and could sign up just fine. Then I used Market
Enabler on my rooted Android and got the Music APK through the market. Works
like a charm.

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melvinram
Not everyone. I had to request an invitation and don't have one yet.

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starwed
Do you need an invitation? AFAIK I'd never requested one, but seemed to be
able to use the site. (While logged in to my regular google account.)

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Raphael
Too bad I don't have $25 to register as an artist.

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johnbatch
Since it's run by the Android team, I guess there is never going to be an
iPhone app.

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jrockway
Just like there's no iPhone app for Gmail, Voice, Reader, Maps, etc.?

~~~
shinratdr
Not relevant as those products aren't run by the Android team.

