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Google Play Music – free, ad-supported radio

officialandroid.blogspot.com

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Re: Google Play Music – free, ad-supported radio

#151

Post by chrisper »

naspinski wrote: post #100
chrisper wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have iOS, then wait 7 more days until Apple Music is coming out. My Spotify premium thing expired after 1 year now, so I have tried out all music services out there this month. My conclusion is that if Apple Music does not provide the integration I am seeking for (since I have an iPhone), I will just go back to Spotify. I am currently on the Google Play Music trial. It is pretty good, but I do not like the "An…

So your advice is to go with something that isn't out or proven in any way over a proven service because "I do not like the 'Android' app on my iPhone"?

I said to go with Spotify OR Apple music (if it is any good). I also said that Google Play music is fine, but not for me.

Re: Google Play Music – free, ad-supported radio

#152

Post by Goronmon »

nosuchthing wrote: post #109
ericdykstra wrote: post #92

I will never pay for one of these music streaming services. You would think in a time when basic necessities are extremely cheap for a significant portion of the world population, people would be more willing to spend money on art. But instead, the vast majority would rather get something for free than pay for it. And the people who pay the $10/month for the convenience of Spotify or Google Play Music or Apple's musi…

The problem with streaming services like Spoitify, Google Play Music, or Apple Music is it's basically the modern version of top 40s (maybe now it's top 40,000's..). When I listen to the radio, I want to discover new music. Last.FM was amazing for this but there was a mass exodus shortly after CBS acquired it and the site has lain dormant and the search engine seems to have gotten worse. http://bandcamp.com/ is prett…

I've found Pandora to be a better discovery service than radio ever was.

Re: Google Play Music – free, ad-supported radio

#153

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

The comments here are interesting.

They're from a bunch of people complaining about this or that issue/concern/worry/gripe from Play and a few of its competitors... but it seems like it never occurs to anyone that it's not 1958 anymore. You don't have to be a passive consumer that has to put up with this shit.

I run a Plex server at home, I can stream my music anywhere. I've even had a little luck streaming actual FM radio stations the same way (I haven't found one yet that doesn't do http streaming on their website, and if you extract those links and add them to Plex...).

Re: Google Play Music – free, ad-supported radio

#154

Post by spankalee »

cheald wrote: post #116
spankalee wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm biased because I work for Google and dogfood Play Music, but for me it's a great combination of: * A free music locker you can upload your songs to * iTunes-like store, with non-DRM'ed files and offline support * Spotify-like subscription service, with offline support * Pandora-like radio stations, with the addition of "I'm Feeling Lucky" radio that adapts to your listening habits, and offline support :) * Songza…

> What it lacks is Spotify-like social features: profiles, activity, etc. Please never add this. I don't want my radio to be a social network. The "profiles and activity" is explicitly why I don't use Spotify.

Yet I really want that because I constantly have friends asking for new things to listen to, and want to check out what some other people are into. It's one of the few social features I get a lot of value from.

Re: Google Play Music – free, ad-supported radio

#155

Post by vosper »

Someone1234 wrote: post #48

This is a nice additional option, but I won't be cancelling my subscription. I hate ads. What I want to see from Google Play Music (aside from a name change) is: - Keep improving music discoverability. It has become better, but could be further improved. - Family plan. I want to pay $15/month and give it to my wife and kid. - Fix the strange YouTube bug, where if I hit pause on Play Music, and then start a YouTube vi…

I agree that the offline playback is clunky. I don't want to have to remember to pin stuff, or try to build up a cache. I just want to allocate some local storage and have most-recently-played cache of songs. If I allocate a couple of GB of storage that would be plenty of music for a road trip.

Re: Google Play Music – free, ad-supported radio

#156

Post by bradyo »

mrinterweb wrote: post #21

My main issue with Google Play Music is that they don't have a desktop app. I wouldn't even care if their desktop app was a wrapper around their HTML player. I just want keyboard music controls from my desktop and the ability to Cmd+Tab to the music app instead of hunting down the browser tab. Without a desktop app, using Google Play Music is disruptive to my workflow.

On Linux, check out Nuvola player (https://github.com/tiliado/nuvolaplayer) - it basically wraps the web UI and provides integration with global media keys / shortcuts and the underlying sound menu (in Ubuntu). As a plus, it integrates with other cloud music streaming services too.

There's also Tomahawk (https://www.tomahawk-player.org/) but I found it a bit too buggy, and unable to canonicalize songs across the streaming music providers.

Re: Google Play Music – free, ad-supported radio

#157

Post by bradyo »

mattmanser wrote: post #85
spankalee wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a very active dogfood group internally. It's likely, even with a lot of internal users, that none of us have hit the text selection problem, or haven't reported it (or there's some technical or prioritization reason for it). I'll look into it and report it to the group though!

Honest question, why do I have to click the hamburger menu on the desktop? Why isn't the menu shown by default? Your recent redesigns consistently suck ass on desktop.

Internally, they actually had this responsive at one point, where the menu would be by default open on large screens and hidden with the option to expand it on smaller screens. Also not sure why they changed it.

Re: Google Play Music – free, ad-supported radio

#158

Post by bduerst »

njovin wrote: post #133
blocke wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The offline playback stuff continues to be pretty clunky to set up. If I know I am going on a road trip and will be driving out of range, actually adding that music to the device is a huge pain, and often the easiest way is just to leave the device playing music for days and let it build up a cache. Horrible." It's not obvious but the way to do this is to "pin" (aka mark as keeping for offline) playlists on the devi…

This is my favorite feature of the service (Spotify has this, as well). The best part is you can pin a playlist and it auto-updates when you add songs. When I'm going out of the country I'll create a 'Trip to XX' playlist, pin it, and then over the days/weeks leading up to the trip add things to it. The app auto-downloads as you do so.

It also does it across devices! I have a crappy old smartphone w/o a sim card that I use for running, and have a running playlist pinned to it.

I can be listening at work, add a song to the playlist, and then back at home the device automatically downloads the new song over wifi for when I go running. (I'm sure spotify does this too)

Re: Google Play Music – free, ad-supported radio

#160

Post by sytelus »

What I would really like to see is some standards to share your preferences, ratings and playlists among music services. Pandora and most other services locks you down and won't let you get your data. I think Google has great opportunity to be different here.
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