Google Music Beta

[nkotb]

Yeah, sorry for keeping a thread on topic for once 

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...

[kosmo vinyl]

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>

[vansmack]

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.

[xneverwherex]

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

[sweetcell]

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...

[Jaguar]

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.

[vansmack]

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.   

[vansmack]

I am liking it since I use multiple computers at work and can have all my music easily accessible now

This made me laugh:



I think Apple meant the "Music App for Mac or PC" as a positive too.

[nkotb]

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.   

[vansmack]

.  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...

[Jaguar]

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.

[vansmack]

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.

[Justin Tonation]

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.

[vansmack]

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.

[vansmack]

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.