Google Begins Rolling Out Google Play Music Family Plan • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Begins Rolling Out Google Play Music Family Plan

#81

Post by astral303 » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 4:15 PM UTC

Artistry121 wrote: post #66

MichaelGG wrote: post #61

Yet the UI for Google Play Music is atrocious. People I give it to that aren't familiar take forever. Myself, despite using it all the time (earphones, casting, car BT) find it frustrating. Hit back a few times no woops too many, OK now I can swipe out the menu and select my library and deal with the ridiculous amounts of scrolling. Sigh. The hilarious thing is their Wikipedia scraping. Every time I select an artist…

Google Music has 3 features that make music playing / discovery light years better than my experience with Apple Music and better than Spotify (I'm a paying Apple Music customer now): 1. Songza playlists - the playlists for mood and activity are far more detailed for categories outside of pop and hip-hop. 2. Easily start a radio station from any song or artist. 3. Catalog. With Youtube Red included nearly every backg…

Apple Music has been amazing for electronic music discovery for me. Far better than Spotify. The Apple Music Electronic editors' playlists are exciting and interesting to listen to ("Boards of Canada: the Deep Cuts" is one brilliant playlist). The way that these are positioned to be easily discovered vs Spotify is also better.

I need to give Google Music a try. Spotify has been really frustrating me with its inability to remember last-played position consistently. Working with large playlists on the go sucks. But with Apple Music, I felt less of a need to create playlists. I created most playlists on Spotify because I had to.

Re: Google Begins Rolling Out Google Play Music Family Plan

#82

Post by stanleydrew » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 4:15 PM UTC

buro9 wrote: post #46

natrius wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of years ago, I created a plain old GMail account and transferred all of my mail to it, mainly so I could get all of the Google Now features that Apps accounts didn't have yet. I still send as my own email address, but I never log into Google Apps account because Google Apps accounts are terrible. I highly recommend abandoning your account. Use a real GMail account. There's a one time switching cost, and it'…

The switching cost is considerable and not realistically achievable for anyone that has embraced the Google world beyond email. I would have to migrate: * Android app purchases. * Android apps that use the Google account for identity. * Data in Google Fit * Data in Google Maps including reviews and ratings of restaurants and places visited (which I find useful when I re-visit a city) * Data in Google Calendars * Addr…

> * Google Drive data, including configuration of permissions on folder access

It's worse than that: I think it's actually impossible to move ownership of Google docs/sheets/slides/etc from a hosted account to a gmail account and vice versa. Also impossible to transfer ownership between two hosted accounts. You can only transfer ownership between accounts in the same domain.

Ran into this problem in a big way when my company's domain name changed and we were trying to migrate.

All the solutions I found involved giving all your data to a third party. Or some complicated export/import conversion through MS-formatted equivalents.

So even after a year on the new domain now, every so often I need to log back in to the old account just to get something from Drive.

Re: Google Begins Rolling Out Google Play Music Family Plan

#83

Post by bweitzman » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 4:37 PM UTC

jdeibele wrote: post #71

Where can you sign up? I tried on the page linked from the blog. I tried from the Google Play app on my old Nexus 5. Maybe I haven't had enough coffee this morning?

in the google music app, not play, go to the hamburger menu -> settings. Should be at the top under the account section, you may need to hit the refresh button under the same the section.

Re: Google Begins Rolling Out Google Play Music Family Plan

#84

Post by bweitzman » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #29

When will they start selling music in FLAC?

You can upload FLAC to google music. Not sure if it stores in that format though, and I think streaming is max 320

Re: Google Begins Rolling Out Google Play Music Family Plan

#85

Post by dfar1 » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

$14.99 for 6 people is a great price. But not really for 2 people. I have spotify and I love it, but I've been wanting to switch to google music for a while because I already store my music there. With spotify I can share my premium account with my spouse. You can't use it at the same time, but that rarely ever happens. It's just 2 of us. And when it does happen I can just download what I want to hear and then go on offline mode. I also like the spotify app. It's easy to use.

The problem with google music (or google in general) is that they can't just be happy with an UI, and so their UI changes constantly which make it for a poor user experience. Plus, I can't just give my spouse my account because that means I am giving all of my google services accounts.

Re: Google Begins Rolling Out Google Play Music Family Plan

#86

Post by Someone1234 » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 4:50 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #75

millstone wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same deal Apple Music offers, so it should not be so surprising.

Which is why I do get the excitement. Are their selection much bigger?

Roughly about the same.

Ad-free YouTube music fills in any gaps. The only thing really lacking is niche music like Immediate Music's back catalogue (since they aren't working with a major record label).

Re: Google Begins Rolling Out Google Play Music Family Plan

#87

Post by lsaferite » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

buro9 wrote: post #16

Sigh. Yet another service not available to Google Hosted domains. I run my own domain, happily pay for it, for 1TB of storage for Photos, for Google Play Music, for apps, for films. But yet constantly excluded from some services and features, and never knowing whether some features will even come to my account. Seemingly all because I wanted to keep the same email I've had since 1997. They could easily add this capab…

Doesn't work the other way around either. I originally signed up under an old @gmail.com address since that was the first address I used in Android and it held all my purchases. My family shares the account on all our devices. All of our personal email is under a family Google Apps account. I signed up for family and when I try to accept it tells me it's not allowed for Google Apps accounts. Joy.

Re: Google Begins Rolling Out Google Play Music Family Plan

#88

Post by lsaferite » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 5:03 PM UTC

SeanAnderson wrote: post #3

semenko wrote: post #2

Yet another service not available to Google Apps users. :/ "You can only set up a family group with a personal Google Account, not a Google for Work or Google for Education account"

It's a family plan...? Why would you expect to be able to use a Google for Work or Google for Education account?

Just because it was rebranded as 'For Work' and 'For Education' doesn't mean all the previous 'For Domains' users should suddenly stop using their accounts.

Re: Google Begins Rolling Out Google Play Music Family Plan

#89

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 5:03 PM UTC

Dwolb wrote: post #19

dpweb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1B YouTube users times 10% subscribe times $10/mo. Note, 1B users today in 2015 . Still growing at 40% according to their stats page. Pretty decent math.

I think it's a decent argument to say there is substantial revenue to be gained. But by claiming Google will hit 100M users paying $10 per month seems lofty unless there's something really unique about an ad free Youtube experience. Netflix has under 40M subscribers paying ~$8 per month right now.

> But by claiming Google will hit 100M users paying $10 per month seems lofty unless there's something really unique about an ad free Youtube experience. Netflix has under 40M subscribers paying ~$8 per month right now.

Netflix doesn't bundle something equivalent to Google Play Music All Access with their streaming video service, and doesn't have an free, advertising-support tier with a billion users as an onramp to the paid service.

Also, Youtube has a different model for acquiring content, and a greater diversity in kinds of content. Which might give it a broader natural market than Netflix has.

Re: Google Begins Rolling Out Google Play Music Family Plan

#90

Post by psaintla » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 5:10 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #36

chambo622 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shouldn't even be surprised anymore when this happens, yet I still am. Why is what is fundamentally a different billing method restricted by account type? It feels completely arbitrary. There's a discussion on this going on over at Google's product forums [1]. Tons of people are in the same boat. These are some of the most devoted users of Google's products, yet are continually left frustrated and left out of new p…

I don't think it's arbitrary; Google Apps is an enterprisey product, where stability is prioritized over new features. Regular people who want to use their own domains are an exception, and certainly not the market they are going after. I say this as someone who has used Apps in the past, but I've given up on it since.

I have a difficult time believing that stability is the main reason for the lack of integration. Admins have the ability enable/disable certain features. Throw a beta flag in front of the feature and say it's not supported.