930 Forums
=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: vansmack on May 10, 2011, 01:40:01 pm
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No sense further littering up my thread with this, so it should probably have it's own thread for the musicphile's out there:
http://music.google.com/about/
Sign up for the beta there and watch the video.
Here's the app while you wait for your invitation:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.music&feature=search_result
Got 20,000 songs you'd like to store in the cloud for free?
http://music.google.com/music/usernotinvited?u=0
Google to Launch Music service at I/O (http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/10/google-music-to-stream-20-000-songs-for-free-launches-at-i-o-la/)
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is this where i can expect your views on the copyright implications of this service? didn't see anything in TSTYNTK... i know, it's an annoying question, but i can't see how any of these cloud services aren't going to be shut down by a court injunction.
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is this where i can expect your views on the copyright implications of this service? didn't see anything in TSTYNTK... i know, it's an annoying question, but i can't see how any of these cloud services aren't going to be shut down by a court injunction.
Google is negotiations with the music companies, but I believe that's for attaching a music store to the service.
I don't agree with the notion that Google providing me with a storage locker for songs I already own is a violation of copyright. I like the amount of money Amazon/Google/Apple could put together to mount a defense of this service against the record companies, as opposed to say an mp3.com...
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My favorite line so far:
"The music service will be free "at least while it's in beta," so here's hoping for a Gmail-style development trajectory."
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Google is negotiations with the music companies, but I believe that's for attaching a music store to the service.
Check that. Here's what they wanted to do - combine my collection with a Spotify type arrangement. Would have been awesome:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/google-music-launching-tuesday-label-187022
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My favorite line so far:
"The music service will be free "at least while it's in beta," so here's hoping for a Gmail-style development trajectory."
Yeah, they know they need to cover their ass because they know what sharks the CRB, the RIAA and other such groups are like!
Is this the sort of thing that will allow others to listen to your files without sharing your password or being in the same room as you? Or is it essentially just another MP3 player via an online storage locker?
If it's just a personal online storage MP3 player, you should NOT have to pay royalties (but you can bet your sweet ass those groups mentioned above will try to force the issue somehow). If it does allow you share with the public, lots of them at once, than you can bet they eventually will make you cough up as much as they can get out of you and probably akin to what they are charging broadcasters.
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Doesn't support ALAC or non-compressed formats. (http://www.google.com/support/music/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1100462&topic=1100183) Supports FLAC but they're "transcoded" to MP3. Whether that means they're stored as MP3s or stored as FLACs then streamed as MP3s is not explained. If I rely on it as a cloud backup, would I be able to retrieve FLACs?
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Not surprisingly, you missed the joke Jag.
Gmail is still in "Beta" and has been for years. Folks hope they keep this in beta for as many years as gmail so it remains free...
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Not surprisingly, you missed the joke Jag.
Gmail is still in "Beta" and has been for years. Folks hope they keep this in beta for as many years as gmail so it remains free...
Okay, that flew right over my head. I use Gmail but not interested in lots of the insider tech talk. That's what we have you around here for. ;)
BUT... what about that cloud thing? Assuming it gets out of Beta. Believe me, I'm sure that the CRB is already itching and and licking their slimy chops together trying to come up with some angle to suck off the expanded musical teat for all that they can suck out of it.
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Doesn't support ALAC or non-compressed formats. (http://www.google.com/support/music/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1100462&topic=1100183) Supports FLAC but they're "transcoded" to MP3. Whether that means they're stored as MP3s or stored as FLACs then streamed as MP3s is not explained. If I rely on it as a cloud backup, would I be able to retrieve FLACs?
What you're asking for here is not a music service, but simply a storage service. No one would want to stream an ALAC file as it will necessarily have to be bit reduced given network limitations.
There are plenty of other Cloud Storage providers that might be more in line with what you're looking for. Google has been clear about this - this is a music service.
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Looks pretty easy so far...
http://www.androidcentral.com/first-look-google-music-beta
I haven't received my invite yet. :-(
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FINALLY got my invite, so the uploading begins. I'm blown away by how easy this is...already tested out the Android app and it's working like a charm! I hope they continue the push from iTunes; I've spent A LOT of time rating and making smart playlists, and since the help mentions that they don't grab from playlists yet, I'm optimistic.
Did they already up the total number of songs? Can't tell or not, but it seems to let me upload 35k.
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Did they already up the total number of songs? Can't tell or not, but it seems to let me upload 35k.
I think that was just an advertised number then. I thought my dev rights allowed me to upload my 44K songs, but it looks like they haven't blocked anybody (yet). I've been adding songs from my initial upload and it's still not telling me I have too many songs.
A couple of things that have caused problems for me. (1) I didn't wipe my phone's SD card clean before I used Google Music, so now I have doubles of some stuff on my phone and there's no way of telling which is the local version and which is the online version. That will be problematic on say a plane or in a tunnel on public transportation. I recommend clearing your phone of your music first, then installing Google Music, and then transfer songs back to your phone, if you so desire, afterwards. (2) I'm not exactly clear which version of IP tags Google Music is using, but it doesn't seem to be consistent (or maybe it's my collection, but I've spent years trying to rectify this), however, the ability to edit from the cloud as made this a non-factor. Amazon should take note.
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(1) I didn't wipe my phone's SD card clean before I used Google Music, so now I have doubles of some stuff on my phone and there's no way of telling which is the local version and which is the online version. That will be problematic on say a plane or in a tunnel on public transportation. I recommend clearing your phone of your music first, then installing Google Music, and then transfer songs back to your phone, if you so desire, afterwards.
Problem one fixed with Google Music 3.0.1 for Android. (http://www.androidcentral.com/googles-music-app-updated-brings-welcomed-changes?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+androidcentral+%28Android+Central%29)
"Google released the first update to their new Music app today bringing it up to version 3.0.1. In this rendition, the ability to delete songs stored on the SD card was added and it brought about some bug fixes as well."
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Did they already up the total number of songs? Can't tell or not, but it seems to let me upload 35k.
I ended up getting past 20K songs and then my Db was parred back to 20K. You?
Still loving this BTW...
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Still going for now...it's been slow going as I was out of town for a few days. Just about to pass 10k, but my upload says it's good for 34,917 (which is less than the total number of songs I have). We'll see, I guess...
Still not sure how it'll handle changes/adds/deletes from iTunes, since that's still my primary database, but so far, I'm digging it too.
Did they already up the total number of songs? Can't tell or not, but it seems to let me upload 35k.
I ended up getting past 20K songs and then my Db was parred back to 20K. You?
Still loving this BTW...
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Still loving this BTW...
i'm not "getting it", and i think it's for the same reason as why i don't need a 80 GB ipod - i don't need access to all my music at all times in all places. my foray into mobile digital music started, and continues, on an ipod nano with 8 GB. i'm used to limiting what music i have with me at any time. i'm typically listening to a few new albums, have a few in my to-be-listened-to queue, and a few old-timers that i dug up (typically EDM music to run/work out to). when i sync my ipod, i have to remove music in order to add new stuff so i'm used to being cut off from part of my music collection while on the go. for me, limiting what i have access to helps to ensure that i get around to listening to everything at least once.
maybe if i start using my phone as a secondary listening device it'll all make sense. or if i'm at a party and i want to pull up a tune.
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Still going for now...it's been slow going as I was out of town for a few days. Just about to pass 10k, but my upload says it's good for 34,917 (which is less than the total number of songs I have). We'll see, I guess...
I guess we'll find out soon.
So I was originally good for 44K songs. I didn't notice, but after I started, I got a new warning on my Music Manager that said that I was over the limit of 20K songs, but it kept uploading. I thought I was over 20K, but I wasn't (Music Manager froze on my server while I was in Vegas). It says now I'm at 19590 songs so I'll see in a little while.
OOPS: I just deleted a book on CD that had uploaded. That removed 422 tracks so we're going to have to wait a little longer to see what happens at 20K. Rookie move...
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i'm not "getting it", and i think it's for the same reason as why i don't need a 80 GB ipod - i don't need access to all my music at all times in all places.
Playlists, playlists playlists.....
One place to unify all playlists across all my devices. Make a change on my phone, it shows up on my computer when I get to work. Listen to music at work all day, thumbs up a song or two, it's reflected on my Dev phone that I use with my stereo. This by far has been the biggest benefit to me for Google Music.
And on the making sure I listen to new stuff at least once - I have a playlist called "New Albums." Now that is synced across all my devices too. It's brilliant.
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maybe if i start using my phone as a secondary listening device it'll all make sense.
And what's your primary listening device?
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good point about the playlist updating. this leads me to another question about people's digital music workflow/consumption patterns - gonna start a new thread about that.
maybe if i start using my phone as a secondary listening device it'll all make sense.
And what's your primary listening device?
for mobile listening, ipod nano. for sedentary, it's laptop + headphones or laptop/ipod + stereo. for critical listening, i transfer to my offline desktop which has an external soundcard and is connected to 2 different sets of speakers. i don't have a home media server although i might get around to setting one up at some point, as both the TV and the BR player allow me to stream music to the stereo.
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One potential problem for families:
While I was listening on my desktop at work today, I grabbed my phone to help a friend with an issue with Google Music on his phone. When I started up the playback on my phone, it paused the playback on my desktop. Could be problematic with multiple user households....
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One potential problem for families:
While I was listening on my desktop at work today, I grabbed my phone to help a friend with an issue with Google Music on his phone. When I started up the playback on my phone, it paused the playback on my desktop. Could be problematic with multiple user households....
ha. i guess the solution is for each family member to set up their own GMusic account and upload the exact same songs a second time (and third, and...). it's a waste but i suspect G needs to do this to show the labels that this isn't a file-sharing service.
i wonder if the system is set up so that if person A uploads a mp3 and person B uploads the *exact* same file, the system stores only one copy.
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i wonder if the system is set up so that if person A uploads a mp3 and person B uploads the *exact* same file, the system stores only one copy.
I think this is what they were trying to do and couldn't reach a deal with the record companies.
I think this is exactly what you should expect from Apple on Monday, however, at least from the big music companies...
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it's good for 34,917
I guess we'll find out soon.
It says now I'm at 19590 songs so I'll see in a little while.
20,185 and rising....
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finally got my invite, 46 of 44,954 added....
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I seem to have been capped at 21,333 but I will need to verify on my server when I get home.
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I seem to have been capped at 21,333 but I will need to verify on my server when I get home.
I was definitely cut off at 23,895 songs. I have to delete in order to upload more.
It was the chance I took, I guess. I definitely would have done manual upload if I listened to their warning...it's a bit of a pain in the ass now.
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Interesting...the message on my upload just changed to read "10,827 of about 30,000 songs added...15,475 songs skipped. You have more than the 20,000 maximum songs allowed. Not all of your songs will be added."
Guess they're enforcing it now. Thought I was lucking out for a bit.
I seem to have been capped at 21,333 but I will need to verify on my server when I get home.
I was definitely cut off at 23,895 songs. I have to delete in order to upload more.
It was the chance I took, I guess. I definitely would have done manual upload if I listened to their warning...it's a bit of a pain in the ass now.
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enough about the google music beta, the hot beta social music website is turntable.fm... based on the blogosphere BUZZ this site has the potential to be way kwel. even with a "friend" and another possibly another friend on facebook in on this beta, i can't get in. even had a even way cool boardie try to get me an email invite which has materialized :'( of course more than likely i'll eventually get kicked out of my own DJ room...
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Yeah, sorry for keeping a thread on topic for once ;D
enough about the google music beta, the hot beta social music website is turntable.fm... based on the blogosphere BUZZ this site has the potential to be way kwel. even with a "friend" and another possibly another friend on facebook in on this beta, i can't get in. even had a even way cool boardie try to get me an email invite which has materialized :'( of course more than likely i'll eventually get kicked out of my own DJ room...
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wait turntable.fm beta has nothing to do with Google Music beta?
<wanders off to decide which of the seemingly bizallion CDs I've left to rip next in order to stuff in some cloud somewhere>
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i wonder if the system is set up so that if person A uploads a mp3 and person B uploads the *exact* same file, the system stores only one copy.
I think this is what they were trying to do and couldn't reach a deal with the record companies.
I think this is exactly what you should expect from Apple on Monday, however, at least from the big music companies...
As predicted, that's what iTunes in the cloud is. 18 millions songs from the major labels. No mention of a way to upload stuff that doesn't match.
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Finally got my invite today. Had no clue how much music I had on my work computer. Not even sure where it came from. I like that they added a bunch of free songs based on what my interests were :) Says I have a 20k limit. Will have to see how much stuff I have at home. I am liking it since I use multiple computers at work and can have all my music easily accessible now :)
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i wonder if the system is set up so that if person A uploads a mp3 and person B uploads the *exact* same file, the system stores only one copy.
I think this is what they were trying to do and couldn't reach a deal with the record companies.
this indeed what google tried & failed to do with song matching- if you uploaded any version of a song, in any format, they'd ID it, map it to an "original"/hi quality version, and serve that back to you upon playback. what you upload is not what will be served back.
but my musing was on a different topic - what i was talking about was if one person uploads a specific file, and then another person uploads that exact same file (identical down to the byte) - will the cloud be smart enough to not store two copies of the exact same song? what brought this to mind is that if 25,000 people download the same song from the same source - in other words, everyone has the same identical file - will the cloud maintain 24,999 copies?
then again, google is supposedly floating in storage capacity so they probably don't care...
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If they maintain only one copy to float about, I assume that it will come down to precise labeling of files. Of course, that is only speculation on my part.
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then again, google is supposedly floating in storage capacity so they probably don't care...
Though I don't know for sure (and nobody will tell me, trust me, I've asked), I'm going with this.
I think Google allotted each user 80GB's of storage space and is running individual databases of each collection. When I request playback of a live bootleg or alternate mix of a song that I downloaded from some local DJ that maybe 100 people might have, I get EXACTLY that song played back to me. That has to be my individual copy of a song.
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I am liking it since I use multiple computers at work and can have all my music easily accessible now :)
This made me laugh:
(http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/06/stevejobswwdc2011liveblogkeynote1102.jpg)
I think Apple meant the "Music App for Mac or PC" as a positive too.
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I assumed that sweetcell meant Apple, not Google, right?
then again, google is supposedly floating in storage capacity so they probably don't care...
Though I don't know for sure (and nobody will tell me, trust me, I've asked), I'm going with this.
I think Google allotted each user 80GB's of storage space and is running individual databases of each collection. When I request playback of a live bootleg or alternate mix of a song that I downloaded from some local DJ that maybe 100 people might have, I get EXACTLY that song played back to me. That has to be my individual copy of a song.
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. No mention of a way to upload stuff that doesn't match.
This is interesting. According to Engadget: "That's done by scanning your library and matching songs to the versions Apple already has (a DRM-free 256kbps AAC file) rather than uploading everything -- a process Apple notes takes "minutes," not "weeks" -- although songs will be uploaded in cases where there is no match."
I guess we'll see when it comes out this fall. Of course Google is probably already cutting the same deal with the Music companies to match Apple's deal...
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then again, google is supposedly floating in storage capacity so they probably don't care...
Though I don't know for sure (and nobody will tell me, trust me, I've asked), I'm going with this.
I think Google allotted each user 80GB's of storage space and is running individual databases of each collection. When I request playback of a live bootleg or alternate mix of a song that I downloaded from some local DJ that maybe 100 people might have, I get EXACTLY that song played back to me. That has to be my individual copy of a song.
You may very well be right about that. The best that I have to compare this to is how Live365 uses it space. Regardless of how many different stations may play the same exact song, it is based solely on any specific file uploaded by the particular station owner who also has a specific allotment to work with. What is shared are the album covers; however, if you know what you are doing, there is a way to manually by-pass those and use what you prefer.
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So this weekend I was streaming a bunch of albums while driving around wine country and on above ground public transportation. I lost the signal a couple of times in the sticks of wine country, but all in all pretty good.
This morning, I listened to one of those albums again above ground and then continued down below ground on the train where I had no signal. Didn't skip a beat. If I hadn't listened to the album earlier that week, I'm sure it wouldn't have worked on the train, but I was quite pleased.
One downside is that my notifications for new email and texts make the music go silent, instead of say my chat notification, which plays over the music.
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I've been uploading for a couple of weeks and was nearly done until I hit a major bug: the music manager says that I've gone over the 20K mark but I've only uploaded just over 10K. I submitted a report and, amazingly, they responded in less than 24 hours: "We're aware of an issue with larger libraries that causes users to prematurely hit the 20,000 song limit, and are working on a fix."
I've actually got a lot more than 10K, maybe over 20K, but I'm only uploading 320kbps AACs newly created from ALACs that themselves were created for my ongoing re-rip project. I convert a few hundred tracks at a time and direct them to a dedicated Google folder. Once uploaded, they're deleted and process is repeated. I put the track titles in various playlists to keep track of progress. It was going swimmingly, until....
As for actually playing the uploaded tracks, well, the web player won't work on my work PC (an "oops" error pops up), whether in IE or Firefox. I tried installing Chrome but some unknown error causes it to fail. We're upgrading to Win7 next month so I'll just wait and see until then.
They will play on my iPhone through Safari but the web player is very mobile unfriendly. Maybe Google or a third party will make a mobile version--not an app but an HTML 5 website for mobiles. I definitely notice a dent in sound quality, however. I don't know if Google actually streams the AACs I uploaded or if they're transcoded into something else.
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Maybe Google or a third party will make a mobile version--not an app but an HTML 5 website for mobiles.
You mean non-Android mobiles. It's beautiful on my phone...
I have more on this but I'm heading out the door and will give you some feedback in the morning. I've been working hard with Google to get this right.
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I've been uploading for a couple of weeks and was nearly done until I hit a major bug: the music manager says that I've gone over the 20K mark but I've only uploaded just over 10K. I submitted a report and, amazingly, they responded in less than 24 hours: "We're aware of an issue with larger libraries that causes users to prematurely hit the 20,000 song limit, and are working on a fix."
As suspected, the 20K song limit was an estimate. In reality folks were originally given an allotment of space that was supposed to be the equivalent of 20K songs. This caused a bunch of confusion as some folks like me were allowed over 20K songs, and some folks with super high bit rate/large files were limited to less than 20K songs.
As this played out, I was originally given the right to upload about 23K songs. As I went to clean up my collection, I was then not allowed to upload anything more until I reduced my number of songs below 20K, so it looks like El Goog is going to be flexible on space, and go by the song limit. At least for right now.
I've actually got a lot more than 10K, maybe over 20K, but I'm only uploading 320kbps AACs newly created from ALACs that themselves were created for my ongoing re-rip project. I convert a few hundred tracks at a time and direct them to a dedicated Google folder. Once uploaded, they're deleted and process is repeated. I put the track titles in various playlists to keep track of progress. It was going swimmingly, until....
This is a similar process to what I did. I basically deleted my entire upload of 23K songs and am now going through my collection album by album to upload. It's rather therapeutic and allows me to clean up a lot bad data.
My point here is a caution: use this move to the cloud to clean up a lot of your data. I spent two days cleaning up my contacts data, photo's and now I'm cleaning up my music. If you've got a mess in your multiple hard drives, cleaning it up before you move it to the cloud will save you so much headache.
As for actually playing the uploaded tracks, well, the web player won't work on my work PC (an "oops" error pops up), whether in IE or Firefox. I tried installing Chrome but some unknown error causes it to fail. We're upgrading to Win7 next month so I'll just wait and see until then.
They will play on my iPhone through Safari but the web player is very mobile unfriendly. Maybe Google or a third party will make a mobile version--not an app but an HTML 5 website for mobiles. I definitely notice a dent in sound quality, however. I don't know if Google actually streams the AACs I uploaded or if they're transcoded into something else.
Those all sound like local errors as I have tested the web version on IE7-9/Firefox/Chrome across WInXP/Vista/7 and various linux derivatives. They've all played fairly well, with the occasional glitch when I'm doing high bandwidth tasks.
As for playback, it seems to be capped at 320 Kbps so you could be in the sweet spot. I wish I had done the same when I started ripping.
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I kinda suspected that the real limit was total data instead of songs. I mentioned that in my bug report but their response didn't acknowledge it.
Your advice on cleaning up data is good. I've been extremely meticulous with my metadata; I almost always have to clean up the crap that Gracenote sends. But then, I work in a library. Too bad Music Beta doesn't use the "sort artist" field.
I still wonder what's being streamed back. The specs say that FLACs are transcoded into 320kbps MP3s. If AACs are also transcoded to MP3 then the sound quality will suffer. What I heard streamed in my car was definitely inferior to the ALACs I usually hear.
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This is a similar process to what I did. I basically deleted my entire upload of 23K songs and am now going through my collection album by album to upload. It's rather therapeutic and allows me to clean up a lot bad data.
My point here is a caution: use this move to the cloud to clean up a lot of your data. I spent two days cleaning up my contacts data, photo's and now I'm cleaning up my music. If you've got a mess in your multiple hard drives, cleaning it up before you move it to the cloud will save you so much headache.
totally agree with you, that's what I'm doing
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Will what you have stored in the cloud be able to serve as a backup if my local storage goes kaput?
Google updated the Music Manager for two way download/upload. They advertise the service as a back up for your computer crashing: (https://plus.google.com/104629412415657030658/posts)
http://support.google.com/androidmarket/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1233029&ctx=plusone
Notice that if you download it, it will come in a 320kbps file. I wonder if I uploaded a song at 128kbps, it returns a 320kbps file? Interesting and off to test.
Now raise the limit or allow me to purchase more and I'm redesigning my server options.