First Impressions Music Beta by Google
Update: Alex tells me if I understand him correctly that it appears that Google's Music Beta seems to attempt to do gapless when cached, but does not quite pull it off.I tested playback on a gapless album and on the second play back it appears to be workingat least on the album I tested, there is a gap between tracks when played back by the Music Beta.I thought perhaps by selecting play album there might be some logic that detected the album was gapless but the tracks had the same several second gap when moving to the next track. Google is doing some caching of each track just before the track plays and it seems that after it gets everything cached the Music Beta recognizes gapless tracks or at least the lack of a gap. Really awesome and would love to hear if others are seeing the same thing.
Also of note, if you have tracks that fail on the upload, but are supported tracks. Just select a different Music library under preferences and then select the iTunes player Music library again. This corrected the failures that I encountered.
Yesterday I received my Music Beta by Google invite and unlike Gmail there does not appear to be any type of feature that allows users to invite people they know. These invitations come directly from Google provided you applied for an invitation. Prior to receiving the invitation I had read very little in the way of reviews or features of the service, I did know that the initial free space allowed was greater than what Amazon Cloud was offering, though Google has not stated what the free allocation will be when they are out of beta. Google often leaves these things in beta for a very long time and I would be surprised if the free space is under 5GB.
To upload music to the Music Beta you need to have a Mac or Windows computer and you have to use Google's Music Manager. Having moved my music to iTunes a long time ago I am happy with the features of the Music Manager. The upload options on the Mac, which is all I have tested, is to select music from iTunes player, a music folder or other folders. I selected iTunes player and because I keep all my music on my Mac Mini Server I set the Music Manger to keep my iTunes library in sync with my Music Beta library.
It seems podcasts upload, but audio books do not. It looks as though all my audio books are on the ScanFailure.log, which I suspect might be due to DRM issues. The Music Manager notes that some file types, like Apple Lossless, are not supported. Otherwise my entire music collection and podcasts were synced to the Music Beta player.
Music you have rated on iTunes carries a thumbs up on the Music Beta player and play statistics carry up to the player as well. Although I have tested playing a track a few times in iTunes and the statistics do not appear to stay in sync following your initial upload. However, if you choose to have the Music Manager keep your library in sync, a purchased song or added song to your iTunes Library is automatically synced.
While you cannot upload music to the Music Beta from a Linux computer, you can use the Music Beta player just fine from a Linux computer. My Ubuntu Linux computers worked great as did the Google Cr-48 laptop. I had mixed results using the player from the Safari browser on the iPhone, yes Music Beta loads and you can access it on the iPhone. The controls are not as responsive as they should be and in my initial tests the player would sometimes stop playing music now and then after a couple songs. I also could not seem to scroll through track lists that were longer than where the player controls start at the bottom of the page. I realize Apple might give Google some grief with releasing an applicaton. Hopefully Google can either find a way to get an applicaton in the App Store or Google can improve the player within the iPhone's Safari browser.
Overall, so far I am thrilled with the Music Beta by Google. Nothing against Amazon, but I think because I have Gmail and Google documents in full use I would prefer to go with Google for keeping my Music collection in the cloud. What it probably will come down to for me is who gives me enough space to keep my entire collection online for the cheapest price with the features I need. The next piece of the puzzle will be to see what Apple does with their cloud music service. I have a much smaller music collections than some folks, so I think these services might not be a one size fits all. With three major players in the game, I think it will only benefit the users.
