Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Play Music – free, ad-supported radio

officialandroid.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 184 posts

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

#161

Post by nosuchthing »

Goronmon wrote: post #152
nosuchthing wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Free-form radio is still a great way to discover music, usually college radio in a major city with have real DJs/music curators who share newly discovered or rare music.

[1] http://wfmu.org/ NYC

[2] www.kexp.org/ Seattle

[3] http://www.kxlu.com/ Los Angeles

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

#162

Post by on_and_off »

jsolson wrote: post #124
philtar wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pinned some albums to download them to my device. I paused that for a bit. .... I don't how to make it start downloading them again.

Sidebar > Settings > Manage Downloads (at least on Android). I agree that this is sub-optimal, but I think up until recently it was actually impossible unless you started another download and tapped the notification.

This.

I sometimes start syncing an album before commuting. It stumble and stops in the metro but starts again by itself afterwards.

I am not sure what the default behavior of the app is. Probably to only download while on wifi, so it does not kill your data allocation. Again, you need to go in the settings in order to change this. Better than having angry users I guess.

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

#163

Post by mikeknoop »

adrusi wrote: post #129
baldfat wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether you like it or not (most people don't) I say YouTube is probably the number one way most teenagers actually listen to music. This isn't music videos mostly. It is pictures of the cover art and the music. I seriously listen to my music through YouTube in another and I am rarely disappointed in not finding the music I am looking for. What is not to like. I can listen with the screen turned off. I use this fea…

There used to be a feature in the youtube app for android to enable background play. It was removed because now they want you to pay for it. That's not to like. No ads is nice, but useless for anyone who is willing/able to install an ad blocker on their phone. You can promote content producers more effectively by spending the money you would drop on a subscription on buying an album, going to a show, subscribing on T…

Further, they started banning apps that used the YouTube API to background audio when YouTube's v3 API shipped last month.

It's very anti-user, I use it to listen to longer podcasts in the background.

Worth rooting for: http://repo.xposed.info/module/com.pyler.youtubebackgroundpl...

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

#164

Post by NeutronBoy »

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…

> don't care that only pennies of that actually goes to the artists.

This is due to the artist's contracts with their record labels. Also, what percentage of a CD or iTunes sale do you think goes to the artist?

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

#165

Post by psychometry »

lintroller wrote: post #103
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…

By this same thought process, you shouldn't purchase music via iTunes because Apple takes their chunk first, then the music label gets their share. The artist is again left with "only pennies". Perhaps you are more upset with music labels and their part in the process rather than companies like Spotify and Google Play Music who are simply trying to meet the demands of the modern consumer.

You don't need to be on a record label to sell music on iTunes. You can use a service lke CDBaby and get most of the revenue after Apple takes their 30%.

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

#166

Post by Nagyman »

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.

Social features are the primary thing I miss from rdio.com, but they have explicit "friending", otherwise you'd see nothing. I assume Google would use all their data to show you everything everyone is listening too and provide little control.

Google doesn't get social. I can't even share a photo from Google Photos onto Facebook that shows the actual photo; at best they'll share a link with a small thumbnail – at worst it prompts people to login to see it and shows nothing of value on FB. I get it...they're competitors...but the effort required to share an "Google Awesome" photo drives me away from sharing the good stuff they do do.

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

#167

Post by jordanthoms »

jonathansizz wrote: post #33
dimino wrote: post #8

Why is it always a surprise to folks that Google Play Music exists? Everyone talks about Pandora, Spotify, Apple, or Amazon, but Google Play Music is never in the conversation. I use it and it's great .

It probably needs a catchier name and more marketing

I.E the 'Google Photos' treatment. Now that Google's got the playbook for that rebrand down, hopefully they'll apply it to some more of their overlooked products.

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

#168

Post by mrinterweb »

jakebasile wrote: post #34
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.

You can use the Google Play Music Chrome extension[1] to fix that. [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-play-music/...

I remember using that extension a while ago, and I forget why I found it lacking. It seems to work pretty well now. Thanks for the reminder.

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

#169

Post by viraptor »

vosper wrote: post #155
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.

Is that a lot different from what happens now? Right now if you check the "Cache during playback", you'll get the recent songs saved. Also anything that's pinned is always saved. What goes out of cache is a bit magic, but it's unlikely to be the very recent stuff.

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

#170

Post by viraptor »

SG- wrote: post #81
dimino wrote: post #8

Why is it always a surprise to folks that Google Play Music exists? Everyone talks about Pandora, Spotify, Apple, or Amazon, but Google Play Music is never in the conversation. I use it and it's great .

Probably because their stuff is mostly only available in the US.

That's not really true in my experience. Used it in many European and other countries and it worked just fine. Sometimes some artists are service/region-limited, but that's because of their stupid labels - this mostly affects the top100 ones.

Where did you run into issues with play music?

Post reply on HN