Technology Today ( Apple,iPhone,iPad,Mac – Google,Tables,Android )
Music
Here’s An Awesome Chrome Extension For Google Music Beta Users
Jul 29th
If you use Google Chrome and Google Music Beta, the “Better Music Beta” browser extension is a must-have.
The extension will also make listening to music on Chromebooks, which don’t have a real music app, a whole lot easier.
The “Better Music Beta” extension adds a button to your extensions bar that, when clicked, pops up a convenient tool for playing, pausing, and skipping back and forth between songs.
Google is starting to send out Google Music Beta invites a bit more generously these day (even if they’ve completely halted Google+ invites) so if you haven’t tried yet, now’s a great time to request an invite.
Also, the extension adds Gmail-like desktop notifications for when new songs come on. If you’re a Last.fm user, the extension supports scrobbling your tracks.
Grab the Better Music Beta extension here for free.
Google Music Lyrics
Google Music Lyrics is a Greasemonkey script that adds a lyrics panel to Google Music. It only works in Firefox and there’s a single lyrics provider: SongLyrics.com.
The lyrics are cached so that they’re displayed instantly the next time you play the same song. You can also edit the lyrics and the changes are saved using HTML5 local storage. To hide the panel, click the title.
Chris Hendry, who developed the script, plans to add other lyrics providers, allow users to import and export lyrics and to make the script work in Google Chrome.
Google Music Beta
Jul 29th
A better way to play your music.
Upload your personal music collection to listen anywhere, keep everything in sync,
and forget the hassle of cables and files. Watch a video
Listen anywhere, even offline.
You can get to your personal music collection at home or on the go. Listen from the web or any enabled device with the Music app available from Android Market. Not online? No problem. The songs you’ve recently played will automatically be available offline. You can also select the specific albums, artists and playlists you want to have available when you’re not connected.
Stay in sync, without the hassle.
Spend more time listening to your music and less time managing it. Once your music is online, it’s always available. Playlists are automatically kept in sync, and you don’t have to worry about cables, file transfers, or running out of storage space.
Your collection, now in one place.
Upload your personal music collection to a single library, even if it’s scattered across multiple computers. You can upload music files from any folder or add your iTunes® library and all of your playlists. And when you add new music to your computer, it can be automatically added to your music collection online.
Mix it up.
Create your own custom playlists with just a few clicks. Or use Instant Mix to automatically build new playlists of songs from your collection that go great together. All the playlists you create and all the changes you make to them are automatically available everywhere your music is.
Introducing Music Beta by Google
Upload your music
Mega-Music App Comparison: Google Music v Amazon Cloud Player v Subsonic v PowerAMP v Winamp
Jul 29th
Source: androidpolice.com
Listening to tunes on your Android device is serious business – no doubt about it.
It’s so serious that many of us are pretty well set in our ways for what we consider the “choice” Android music-listening application, and we aren’t willing to budge on it.
PowerAMP users, for example, swear by the application’s seemingly endless list of customizations and options. On the other hand, Subsonic devotees like myself are advocates of what is probably the most configurable music streaming experience in existence. But the big boys have come to play, and with Google Music Beta entering the foray, along with Amazon‘s still-somewhat-new Cloud Player, the war for musical dominance on Android getting louder by the minute. But who reigns supreme?
| Feature | Google Music | Amazon Cloud Player | Subsonic | PowerAMP | Winamp |
| Streaming | Yes | Yes | Yes (via server) | No | No (Wi-Fi sync) |
| Local Storage Playback | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Playlist Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Music Storefront | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| Multi-Format Playback | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Equalizer / Tone Adjustment | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Scrobbling | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Gapless Playback | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Internet Radio | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Lock-screen Music Controls | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Cost | Free (For now) | ~$10 For 20GB | $15 (for server) | $4.99 | Free |
That’s quite a few features to consider – and really, these apps are all a little different from one another in their music-acquisition philosophies, something that Artem felt made a comparison, in some respects, difficult. I disagree – aside from dedicated internet radio applications (ala Pandora, Grooveshark, etc), most of us probably just use one other music application. We’ve all probably chosen that application based on our individual needs, as well.
For example, I chose Subsonic because I have a very large (>100GB) music collection, much of which is in high-fidelity 320Kbps MP3 format, meaning the amount of space each of my albums takes up can be rather ginormous. This makes storing any substantial amount of music on my phone locally a little difficult, but Subsonic allows me to cache the last 10GB of I’ve streamed so that it can still be played offline – rather convenient when you’re trying to keep your data use down or have no signal. Also, I don’t want to pay for 100GB of Amazon or (eventually) Google storage. But I also have a pretty decent internet connection at home – so that factors in as well.
When it comes down to it, choosing a music app is all about what your needs are – so we’re going to break down the strengths and weaknesses of the major players.
#5 Google Music 3.0
You Should Use It If: You’re a beta-invitee to Google Music, have a vendetta against Amazon, and Subsonic is too complex or impractical for you.
Before I even delve into Google Music, be aware, I’m not a beta-invitee at this point, so I can’t legitimately comment on the quality of the service’s streaming, tagging, etc. Though I can say what I know about the Music application itself – it is about as bare-bones as you can get. But it does keep things simple – something Google is famous for doing well.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the Music application really is done all that well. The scrolling cover-art background is a nice touch, but when most of you albums don’t have artwork, it starts to look more bland than exciting. Google’s tagging recognition on tracks is generally good, and the various sort options lend an illusion of flexibility. In reality, they just take up space at the top of the screen. I think most of us are pretty content with hierarchical (artist -> album -> song) sorting. If I ever want the entire list of songs or albums on my phone, I’ll let you know.
Music has, essentially, no configuration options. It doesn’t have lockscreen music controls – something even Amazon Cloud Player can lay claim to. In combination with the actual Google Music locker service, Music becomes more robust, but only just enough to compete with Amazon‘s product, and even at that, it’s hard to see how Google’s service is any better.
#4 Amazon Cloud Player
You Should Use It If: Subsonic is a little too technical for you (or you don’t have an always-on desktop at home), you still want cloud-based music streaming, and you buy a substantial portion of your MP3′s from Amazon.
Amazon Cloud Player has burst onto the Android music scene seemingly out of left field. Unfortunately, its newcomer-status stills shows at this point – while it is very easy to set up, Cloud Player is a fickle application with limited configuration options. Though it does support the basics (a “Now Playing” list, playlists, shuffle), the application itself is nothing to write home about. In fact, I’ve found that while streaming over Cloud Player, any significant interruption to your connection will simply cause the player to skip to the next track and start downloading it, instead. Talk about annoying.
But, Amazon does offer you 20GB of cloud storage after one album purchase from Amazon‘s MP3 store, and any purchases made therein don’t count against your storage limit – quite the incentive to buy yet more stuff from the US’s favorite digital retailer. The Cloud Player upload utility isn’t terrible, either, but it’s by no means great.
Cloud Player also scans your device for locally stored tunes, so you aren’t limited to your Cloud library. Frustratingly, you can’t simply download single tracks for playback or storage, unless you want to add them one-by-one to a playlist or the now playing queue with a long press action. This is part of the reason I stick with Subsonic – I can pick and choose the tracks I want to download or play with checkboxes, and that’s not exactly revolutionary technology.
#3 Winamp
You Should Use It If: You use Winamp on your home computer, internet radio stations are something you enjoy, and you want to spend approximately zero dollars.
Winamp is hands-down the easiest among the top three music players to get up and running, particularly if you’ve used Winamp for Windows before (for the syncing side of things, that is). It’s also the only app on the list that straddles the fence between streaming and pure local playback, via its Wi-Fi Sync utility. Winamp won’t download tracks from your home computer’s library unless it’s connected via Wi-Fi and the library is visible on your network – something a lot of people may not be comfortable with.
Still, Winamp offers a lot of options (like a built-in list of internet radio stations, and free sponsored music downloads) for a free piece of software (it’s the only truly free service of the five), and it looks good doing it. But Winamp is, at heart, a local media player with a few tenuous connections to the net.
#2 Subsonic
You Should Use It If: You have a dedicated, always-on desktop computer at home with a robust net connection, a large music collection, and some patience to set everything up.
Subsonic is a great, great piece of software. But it requires a significant amount of setup on the PC end, and it’s not a true cloud service – it just uses your home computer or server to stream music to your phone. This does allow almost endless configurability of your streaming experience, which is really great if you’re even a semi-power-user like me. Unfortunately, the Android application does leave some things to be desired in terms of a real music experience.
Namely, Subsonic has none of the awesome volume, tone, and equalizer controls of PowerAMP (which is why you’ll see PowerAMP occupying the #1 spot below), and it just doesn’t look nearly as awesome. Subsonic holds its own – it has bitrate adjustment options right inside the app, it can support up to three individual Subsonic servers, and has cool menus for things like recently added or most played tracks.
You can also adjust how many songs Subsonic will stream in advance, and how much SD storage it can take up as cache (you can even set it to unlimited). Subsonic is the bona-fide music geek streaming service, and I don’t see myself switching any time soon. Also, be wary: the Subsonic server is free for a limited trial, but after that, you’ll need to cough up $15 to register your server for mobile streaming. You do get a nifty Subsonic domain prefix, though, to make the process of connecting to your server a lot easier to remember.
#1 PowerAMP
You Should Use It If: Streaming is either unimportant to you, or you don’t mind downloading from the cloud via another app and playing in PowerAMP, and being able to truly customize your music listening experience is a crucial deciding factor for you.
PowerAMP takes itself very seriously, and anyone who takes listening to music seriously can appreciate that. While PowerAMP definitely isn’t easy to set up by the average-person standard (though for most of us reading here, it’s probably very simple), it’s significantly less work than Subsonic, and there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s a much better application overall. Of course, PowerAMP doesn’t have any streaming or cloud access options, so you have to make do with local storage. Combined with any one of the above three streaming services, though, you can bridge the cloud “gap” with only a little extra work by simply downloading the tracks you want to listen to, and letting PowerAMP scan the directories they’re located in.
PowerAMP’s equalizer and tone controls are fantastic. It’s the only Android music player with gapless playback and crossfade options. It has more buttons than a 1960′s stereo – and I love it. It really is the music lover’s music app – and that’s why it sits atop our list. And at $5, it may seem a bit steep, but you’re getting more features and customization options than you can shake a stick at.
Conclusion
I ordered these apps in what I considered a fair evaluation of their utility and general good-ness, but really, any of them may cater best to your specific needs. If you can’t live without streaming, no amount of knobs and buttons will get you to switch to PowerAMP. Likewise, if you can’t tear yourself from Winamp’s radio stations and simple Wi-Fi sync, Subsonic might be a tough sell.
Google Music Beta Vs. Amazon Cloud Player
Jul 29th
Source: androidpolice.com
When Amazon Cloud Player hit the scene, my exact words were “Google Music who?” and now that Google Music Beta invites are starting to rollout to the masses, I can aptly answer that question.
I’ve used Amazon Cloud Player as the primary music player on my Android phone since its inception at the end of March, so I’ve become quite familiar with how it works. The service has its pros and cons (like any service, I suppose), but overall I am a big fan. Now that I have had a day or so to play with Google Music, though, I thought it would be appropriate to put these two in the ring together to see who would rise as the victor. Journey with me in this head-to-head deathmatch between Google Music Beta and Amazon Cloud Player.
Storage and Pricing
Before I get into the technical comparisons of each application, lets talk about how much music you can actually upload to each service and how much it will cost you.
Amazon Cloud Player
Amazon offers up 5GB of storage for free, so if you haven’t taken Cloud Player for a spin, there is really no reason not to do so. The price goes up from there at a dollar per gigabyte, though – all the way up to 1000GB. That should be more than enough to handle even the biggest music packrat’s collection, if you’re willing to shell out that kind of cash, that is.
Google Music Beta
Google has taken an interesting approach as far as storage capacity is concerned for beta testers – instead of giving a set limit in digital space, you have a song limit. 20,000 songs, to be exact. There is currently no way to increase that storage as of right now, but I have a feeling that model will change as time goes on and this service leaves its beta tag behind.
WINNER: Google Music Beta
On The Desktop
Logically, the best place to start the comparison is where the magic begins – with the uploader.
Amazon Cloud Player
This the first thing that you have to interface with in order to start enjoying your music on the go. If you currently use iTunes or Windows Media Player, it should auto-detect your tunes, but for some reason I could never get that to work properly, so I had to manually choose which folders I wanted to upload. I guess it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s clearly more of a pain than it should be.
The uploader itself is another annoyance altogether, as it is basically tethered to the browser. On two separate occasions, I accidently closed my browser while uploading music to the Cloud Drive, and *poof*… the uploader closed, too. Now, had I been able to get it to sync correctly with either iTunes or WMP, it may have only been a minor annoyance, but considering I had to select each folder that I wanted to upload individually… it was almost more trouble than it was worth, as I had to go through the entire selection process again (aside from the music that had already uploaded, of course).
The interface of the uploader is clean, easy to navigate, and basic. Exactly what is needed from something of this nature – it does what it’s supposed to to do without navigation woes.
Google Music Beta
Just like the uploader for Cloud Player, you can upload tracks from iTunes, Windows Media Player, and individual folders, but you also have the option to upload your entire music collection all in one go. Since Google is allowing beta testers to upload up to 20,000 songs, I opted to forgo the tedious process of selecting individual artists or albums and just dumped my entire collection to the cloud. Don’t be mislead by that statement though – when I say dumped that makes it sound like it’s a fast process… believe me, it’s not. As a matter of fact, it probably won’t be finished until next week (if I’m lucky).
One area where Amazon‘s uploader is a bit more functional than Google’s is the “other folders” area. As I stated earlier, that was the only way that I could the Amazon uploader to work efficiently for me, but it was quite easy – I picked the folders that I wanted to upload at the time. Unfortunately, with Music Beta when you choose “Other folders”, the folders that you select at that time are static. They will stay synced with your Music player all the time, which is kind of a pain if you just want to upload a few tracks from a random artist.
Back on the bright side, Google’s uploader is a standalone application, so I can just let it do its thing. It even hides itself in the system tray as to not take up any room in the taskbar, which is quite nice. Another very nice feature of Google’s uploader is the fact that it has options. You can control when to upload music, how much to upload at one time, and even how much bandwidth to allocate for the task. The one features that it is lacking over Amazon‘s uploader, however, is a pause button. If you need to stop the upload process for some reason, you have to close the program altogether, but it will pick up where it left off when you launch it again.
While both uploaders serve their purpose, and each of them have their pros and cons, I have to say that Google Music Beta is the better contender in this area.
WINNER: Google Music Beta
In The Web Browser
Now that we’ve covered the uploaders for each service, lets move on to the web-based player for each. Before I get started with the comparison, though, I have one gripe that pertains to both players: tags. Normally, I am a Winamp user on the desktop, which reads both ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags, so all of my tracks show up in the correct spot regardless of which tag they use. Cloud Player and Music Beta, on the other hand, simply do not. I’m not entirely sure how Amazon or Google go about reading the ID tags of uploaded music, but some of my tracks show up drastically different in the cloud than they do in Winamp. That really wouldn’t be so bad, but there is no way of fixing it within the Cloud Player or Music apps. [Update: It turns out that you can update the track info in Music Beta, but not within Cloud Player. Simply click the down arrow next to the track title and choose "Edit song info." Thanks to Rastor for pointing this out!] Now that I have that of my chest, we can continue with the comparison.
Amazon Cloud Player
If there’s one thing that I can say about Amazon Cloud Player’s interface, it’s that it still looks like a web app. Call it nitpicking if you want, but I prefer apps that look like more like native desktop applications. With that said, the interface is still quite clean and easy to navigate. The controls are very defined and easy to locate (see ‘em there, in the bottom left?) with volume, shuffle, and repeat all just a click away.
The library is simple and direct, offering varying ways of browsing through your music. You can sort by song, album, artist, genre, latest uploads, or latest purchase. It also offers a search function, which can be a Godsend if you’re looking for one track among many. It also includes simple playlist support, so creating a quick mix of your favorite tracks or a playlist to work out to is easy peasy.
Another really nice feature of the Cloud Player is that is allow for quick access to the Amazon MP3 Store, which makes purchasing music and adding it to your Cloud Drive a breeze. The best part about buying music directly from Amazon MP3 is that it doesn’t go against your quota in Cloud Drive, saving you precious space for future tunes.
Overall, I really like the Cloud Player web app. It’s easy to use and does exactly what I want it to do – organizes and plays my music.
Google Music Beta
Let me just start off by saying that I really like the Music Beta interface. It definitely feels more like a native application to me, which is a huge bonus in my book.
The controls are not as dominant as they are in Cloud Player, as they just sort of blend in down at the bottom. All of the features are still there – shuffle, repeat, and volume – but it also adds a thumbs up and thumbs down feature, similar to Pandora. I’m not entirely sure why thumbs down is included though, since you upload your own music collection. Why would you want to thumbs down music from your own collection? This could hint a bigger things for Music Beta, but I’ll leave the speculation for another day.
The library is quite similar to that of Amazon Cloud Player, with categories for songs, artists, albums, genres, and recently added tracks. It also includes some pre-made playlists for recently added tracks, free songs (if you choose the include the free tracks when you setup Music Beta for the first time – I did not), and tracks that have received your thumbs up approval.
I’m really not sure why track 2 isn’t showing up here, but I better figure it out… that’s my favorite track on the album!
What really sets Music Beta apart, however, is the Instant Mix playlist. Quite similar to iTunes’ Genius playlist creation, you select a track, click the down arrow, and choose “Make Instant Mix.” It will then create a playlist of similar music, saving you all of the hassles of doing such a task for yourself.
One thing that Music Beta is lacking in comparison to Cloud Player is an MP3 store. No buying music and quickly adding it to your library here – you have to upload everything, which is kind of a downer.
Like Cloud Player, Music Beta also includes a handy search box for quick access to any track – but wouldn’t it have been sort of silly for a music service provided by a search company to lack suck a feature?
Overall, I am a big fan of the web interface for Music Beta. Even though it’s lacking a store, it’s clean, very easy to navigate, very organized, and has the super-awesome Instant Mix feature.
WINNER: TIE (if you never plan on using the Amazon MP3 store, however, Google Music Beta easily takes this one)
On The Android
This one is the big deal. It can make or break the entire service depending on the app’s usability, interface, features, and everything in between. Without further ado, I give you the Android app comparison.
Amazon Cloud Player
For starters, the Amazon Cloud Player Android app is nice. We’ve talked about it before, and I love it just as much now as I did back then (as if it were so long ago). The ability to access both local media and music stored on the Cloud Drive from the same app is incredible – and the fact that that app displays them in separate interface instead of bundling them together is a huge bonus.
The interface is extremely intuitive, with the navigation controls along the top of the app and all media controls setting conveniently at the bottom. Just like the web app, the media controls standout from the rest of the Android app, which only adds to the usability.
The app has direct access to the Amazon MP3 store, so you can quickly and easily buy music and add it to your library on the go. The music becomes available immediately, so you don’t have to deal with the hassle of uploading music just to have mobile access to it.
Have some music stored in your Cloud Drive and want a local copy of it, too? No problem, the Cloud Drive app has that covered as well. You can download both single tracks or full albums from your Cloud Drive directly from the Android app, avoiding the need to grab the USB cable to get some new tunes on your device.
With all music apps, there is one feature that can break a great app down very quickly: the widget. If a music app has a bad widget, it almost kills the usability of the entire app. Fortunately for Amazon, the widget for Cloud Player is quite solid. It’s what you would expect from a music widget – basic controls, now playing, and quick access to the app. The fact that it’s also very clean isn’t a bad thing, either.
Google Music Beta
Google had a wonderful opportunity to save itself from the terrible monstrosity of a music app that ships with stock Android with this new incarnation. Unfortunately… that didn’t’ happen. As much as it pains me to admit it – this app is really no better than the stock app as far as functionality is concerned. Sure, it looks better – but a pretty face will only get you so far.
The interface isn’t quite as intuitive as it could be – sliding through the various categories is okay, but it just doesn’t seem to be all that practical. One of my biggest peeves with this app is the fact that it shows all of your media – cloud and local – all in the same list. If you have some of the same music on your SD card that you have in the cloud, it shows up twice, which is as annoying as it is ridiculous.
Just like the Cloud Player app, the media controls are along the bottom of the app as long as music is playing, but there’s one thing missing… the back button. What is it with Google and the lack of back buttons? I don’t get it. Sometimes I want to hear a track again, or perhaps I hit the next button on accident. Whatevs, Google.
When it comes to selecting an album to listen to, I absolutely hate the tap > dropdown > tap again thing that Google has going on with the Music Beta app. When I tap an artist, I want to see an album list without having to scroll. That is just an extra step between me and music that I’m not interested in dealing with.
Music offers a similar feature to Cloud’s ability to download tracks to your SD card – but it’s more like offline caching. Once you tell it to make an album available offline, it will download the album (this is set to happen only on Wi-Fi by default) and store it locally on your SD Card. It took some digging to find exactly where it stores these files, as it’s buried semi-deep: SD Card/Android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music is where you’ll find all of the cached tracks (pictured above). Be aware, though, it doesn’t use properly named files, so you’ll have no idea which tracks are which.
If you’ve seen the widget for the original Google Music Player, then you’ve seen the widget for the new Music Beta as well – it’s the same exact one. It probably goes without saying, but I wasn’t impressed with the widget originally and, well, nothing has changed. Again, no back button. C’mon.
WINNER: Amazon Cloud Player
Summary and Conclusion
I realize this is quite long and for those that didn’t want to read the entire thing, here is a quick recap:
Amazon Cloud Player
Pros
- Easy to use uploader
- Very clean web interface
- Direct access to the Amazon MP3 store from both the web player and the Android App
- Incredible Android app; very well organized and intuitive interface
Cons
- The uploader is tied to the browser, which can be annoying if you close the browser by accident
- The web player still looks like a web app, not a native app
- Limited space/price per gigabyte
Google Music Beta
Pros
- Huge amount of storage while in beta
- Very nice uploader
- Intuitive, well designed web app
Cons
- No MP3 store
- Poorly designed Android app
- Terrible widget
OVERALL WINNER: Amazon Cloud Player
While Google Music Beta started off strong, the Android app was really the deal breaker for me. It’s lacking features that I feel are clutch in a good music app, and the interface isn’t as intuitive as it could be. If you’re just looking for a service to hold your music and allow you to stream it from any PC, then Google Music is definitely the way to go. But, if a good Android app is a must-have for you, then I just can’t recommend Music Beta at this point
In the end, though, it’s really up to you to decide which service you prefer.
Cloud music: Google Music Beta vs. Amazon Cloud Player vs. iTunes in the cloud vs. Microsoft Zune Pass vs. Best Buy Music Cloud
Jul 10th
Apple’s WWDC keynote was earlier this month, and it was largely focused on their new cloud initiative, fittingly named iCloud. One of the big features of iCloud, naturally, is its iTunes integration, giving us another cloud-based music solution to choose from. This comes on the heels of Google and Amazon’s announcements of Music Beta and Cloud Player, respectively. Microsoft’s Zune Pass and Best Buy’s newly announced Music Cloud service offer additional choices, so consumers have a lot to consider. They are all similar in intent, which is to provide users with an easy way to manage music without having to sync or worry about which device has what music on it. Despite their similarities, they all have glaring differences that users should know about before signing up for any of them. So let’s get right down to it. There are admittedly other viable options, such as personal hosting, but we’re going to focus on these five.
Google Music Beta | Amazon Cloud Player | Apple iTunes in the Cloud | Microsoft Zune Pass | Best Buy Music Cloud
The premise of most of these services is the same: Your music collection will be stored on their servers or “the cloud,” which will enable you to access it wherever or whenever you want so as long as you have an Internet connection. Amazon, Google, Apple and Best Buy are essentially providing users with a digital external hard-drive that will be able to store all of your media on their servers. Microsoft’s model is a bit different; users pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to music rather than it acting as a personal collection.
Amazon and Apple both have stores from which you can purchase media. Any content bought from either of them from here on out will be stored at no cost to your hard-drive space. While Google does not have a store, they are able to aggregate music from most places and allow the user to upload purchases from anywhere.
Storage space
Google Music Beta
Provides users with up to 20,000 songs for free as long as it’s still in Beta, no matter where the songs were purchased. No word yet on if we’ll be able to purchase additional storage.
Apple iTunes in the Cloud
Provides users with up to 25,000 songs. Free for anything purchased from iTunes, but $25/year for all other music.
Amazon Cloud Player
Provides users with storage per gigabyte. You get 5GB free. If you buy a single mp3 album from Amazon, you get 20GB added on for free for a year. Purchasing storage is by the GB, at $1 per GB. Any albums or songs purchased from Amazon do not count against your storage.
Microsoft Zune Pass
There is no storage space because, unlike the others, this is a subscription based service. Users can pay $14.99/month and have access to unlimited songs and albums.
Best Buy Music Cloud
There appears to be no storage cap on Best Buy’s service. You pay $3.99/month to access the music you put on Best Buy’s cloud on your device.
Streaming, and not
With Google, Amazon and Best Buy’s services, you must upload your current collection. This can take a while, especially if you have slow upload speeds. However, once all of the music is up, you don’t have to worry about it. It is accessible from anywhere from any browser (so as long as it has Flash). Google Music Beta is always scanning a folder that you specify. So if you buy an album from Amazon, put it on your Cloud Drive and download it, Google’s Music Manager will automatically upload it as long as you have it pointed at the folder. This is a really nice feature.
iTunes scans your library and gives you access to all of your music on all of your iOS devices — all without uploading a single song. With iTunes Match, it is also able to do this with non-iTunes purchased content.
You may look at uploading and complain about what a pain it is to upload your collections for Amazon and Google Music. Meanwhile, iOS users have it easier, with a scanning system and no uploading. I suspect Apple was able to do this because of the difference in how the services serve back the music. iTunes in the Cloud does not stream songs directly (you download them) and cannot be accessed from a non-iOS device. Google Music Beta and Amazon Cloud Player can be accessed from any device with an app, or a browser with Flash. Those who have purchased the BlackBerry Playbook have reported that Amazon’s Cloud Player works flawlessly on it. (On the other hand, it is a PlayBook, so there may be other concerns. Zing!)
Again, iTunes in the Cloud does NOT stream music. It lists your music and allows you to download songs to your device. It’s a handy replacement for wired syncing, but not beneficial if you’re intending to stream.
Microsoft’s Zune Pass is streaming but you don’t have to upload your music. This is because it is an entirely subscription-based service where you pay monthly to access the music that you wish. In other words, you don’t own the music but have access to an enormous library of songs.You can access it on any Windows Phone 7 device, Xbox 360 (with Live Gold account), or PC. It should be noted that there is a three device and three computer cap per account.
What if you don’t want to stream?
While you can stream your Amazon or Google collection, sometimes you’ll want to actually have the music on your phone — maybe you’re traveling or just have a bad connection. A note for offline use: When you download music to your device, it is not removing the songs from the servers that they’re stored on; it’s merely copying them. You can download your media to as many devices as you want with Amazon, eight mobile devices with Google and 10 iOS devices with Apple.
Google Music Beta
Called Pinning, it allows users to simply check a box next to Artists, Albums or Playlists that will download the media to the device. Everytime you update the Playlist for example, it will automatically update, either only over WiFi or as soon as possible over 3G (depending on the settings you choose).
Amazon Cloud Player
Like Google, Amazon allows users to download Artists, Albums or Playlists to their device and access them from the “On-Device Music” tab. Unlike Google, however, it does not automatically update every time you change the playlist.
Apple iTunes in the Cloud
iTunes in the Cloud is always in offline mode because there is no streaming.
Microsoft Zune Pass
Microsoft allows users to download and sync their Zune collection to three computers and three devices; provided that there is sufficient space on your phone, you can store as much as you like. Users may also “buy” 10 songs per month with the Pass, which will allow them to take ownership of it in the case that Microsoft loses the rights or you cancelled your Zune subscription.
Best Buy Music Cloud
Best Buy Music Cloud is very similar to Amazon and Google in that it allows your collection to go offline if you don’t want to stream. Users can select individual songs, artists or playlists to store offline.
While we all have the service that we prefer, they all represent a step forward that will hopefully be recognized as such by the music industry. As the platform wars heat up it seems that each will be able to offer its own version of the cloud music idea. The real winner in my book, will be the cross platform solution available on every device. There is no doubt that Google, Amazon and Best Buy are going to try to get on as many platforms as possible. Not only phone mobile platforms, but dedicated applications for Roku, Google TV and the Boxee Box. I imagine in the next few years we’re going to see cars strike deals with companies to have their service come pre-installed (I can dream right?) While Best Buy can boast BlackBerry OS, iOS and Android, it unfortunately has other issues. It will only scan your iTunes library, so if you use some other music management software or keep your music in other folders, it appears that you’re out of luck. I am doubtful as well that Apple will approve Google or Amazon’s services, but I’d love to be proven wrong. Same for the Zune Pass; if Microsoft would open it up to other devices, subscriptions would skyrocket because it has a lot to offer. While we wait for these solutions to battle it out, here is a simple pro and con list if you’re having trouble deciding.
Pros and cons
Cloud-based music services backed by the Internet giants seem to all be coming at the same time. The music industry is no doubt to blame for the delay and are likely still uncomfortable with how things look at the moment.
Google Music Beta
Pros:
- Stores 20,000 songs for free no matter where they were purchased (unless it has DRM)
- Allows users to access and stream their music on any device; their music is associated with their Google account
- Allows streaming from the browser at music.google.com (as long as it has Flash)
- Allows metatag editing
- Supports streaming/downloading to 8 mobile devices and unlimited computers
- Supports Playlist sorting on the web (by Artist, etc. …)
Cons:
- Doesn’t have a place to buy content
- Requires an upload
- Not publicly available (only in Beta)
Amazon Cloud Player
Pros:
- Allows users to purchase more storage if you max out
- Store integration allows easy importing
- Content purchased from Amazon doesn’t count against your storage total
- Can be accessed as an app and streamed
- Supports unlimited device streaming and downloading
- Can be accessed from any browser at Amazon.com/CloudPlayer (as long as it has Flash)
- Stores content no matter where the music is from (unless it has DRM)
Cons:
- More expensive than Google or Apple to store uploaded content
- Does not allow metatag editing
- Requires an upload of content
- No ability to sort Playlists (by Artists, etc…)
Apple’s iTunes in the Cloud
Pros:
- Does not require an upload, unless Apple does not have the music that you did not purchase from iTunes
- Purchases from iTunes are stored for free
- Supports downloads of up to 10 iOS devices
Cons:
- Does not stream
- Only available on iOS devices
- Only supports iTunes music but will allow other music to be mirrored for $25/year. Still unclear what happens to the music if you stop the subscription
Microsoft Zune Pass
Pros:
- Provides access to unlimited music for a monthly fee
- Does not require an upload
- Ability to stream the music to PC, Windows Phone 7 device and Xbox 360 (requires a Live Gold account)
- Ability to download Zune content on devices for offline access
Cons:
- Other than the PC, only available on Windows Phone 7 and Xbox 360 (requires a Live Gold account)
- Monthly fee of $14.95 may seem high to some
- You don’t own any of the music (though you can download 10 songs per month)
- Only available on 3 devices and 3 computers
Best Buy Music Cloud
Pros:
- Available on iOS, BlackBerry and Android
- Allows streaming on web and to devices
- Allows caching music for offline listening
Cons:
- Only able to scan iTunes library for music
- The app and process of loading music has been slower than the others in our testing
- Web interface is clunk
Read More: Androidcentral
What’s driving rise in music sales?
Jul 10th
Album sales edge up 1 percent for just the first half of the year and suddenly it seems everybody in the music industry is giddy.
That’s likely due to the fact that since 2004, all the news about sales has been bad, bad, bad. Consider that the music industry hasn’t seen growth since George W. Bush was preparing for a second term as president, the Boston Red Sox were breaking the curse of the Bambino, and Mark Zuckerberg was founding Facebook.
Last Wednesday, research firm Nielsen SoundScan announced that the industry recorded a 1 percent increase in overall U.S. album sales for the first six months of the year, snapping a dismal seven-year run of sales declines. Digital music helped power the gains as sales of digital tracks rose 11 percent, a rebound from the 1 percent growth for all of 2010. Digital albums grew at a healthy 19 percent.
Nobody is dancing in the streets, but the numbers have stirred hope among some connected to the business that a decade-long revenue slide–which they trace to Napster and the onset of illegal file sharing–may be over. “I think the rise in album sales certainly gives one cause for cautious optimism,” said John Marmaduke, CEO of Hastings Entertainment, a chain store that sells books, DVDs, and CDs.
Of course, there’s nothing to say that the second half of the year won’t bring more losses and it’s not clear whether the rise in unit sales will translate into revenue growth. Nielsen tracks unit sales and not the revenue generated. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) collects that data but doesn’t report until after the end of the year. And the last full year that revenue was up was–you guessed it–2004. Total music sales were more than $12 billion then. They tumbled to $6.8 billion last year.
The graphic below charts the amount of revenue generated by overall music sales for the years 1996 through 2010. Note that 2004 also halted a string of revenue declines, but in that case the upturn was short-lived. The obvious question here is whether the recent sales boost is also an anomaly?
Above chart illustrates the revenue generated by overall music sales for the years 1996 through 2010. To expand the size, click on the graphic.
(Credit: Recording Industry Association of America)
It might be easier to answer that question if we knew what triggered the sales increases. Nobody seems to know for sure, but some of the experts and people on the front lines of music retail agree several factors likely played a part.
Death of LimeWire
The four largest record companies took down LimeWire, at one time the most popular way to download music illegally. NPD Group, a research firm, reported in March that 56 percent of everyone who downloaded music illegally with a peer-to-peer service in the third quarter last year did so with LimeWire.
The RIAA prevailed last year in a copyright case it brought against the company behind the peer-to-peer network and founder Mark Gorton. A federal judge found Gorton and the company liable for copyright infringement and ordered the service be shut down. Gorton, who closed the service down in October, later paid RIAA members $105 million in damages. NPD reported that the percentage of Internet users who download music via P2P services in the fourth quarter of 2010 was 9 percent. For the same period three years earlier, the percentage of users downloading via P2P was 16 percent.
“When you’re competing with rampant piracy, the best way to combat it is to lower prices.”
–John Marmaduke
“We’re still an industry that is hard hit by digital theft and half the size it was ten years ago,” Mitch Bainwold, the RIAA’s CEO, told CNET in an e-mail. “There’s probably no one single reason (for the rise in sales), but improved marketing efforts …and antipiracy successes like the closure of LimeWire have helped.”
Not everyone agrees that LimeWire or P2P services stifle sales. Wayne Rosso, the former president of defunct file-sharing network Grokster who now blogs about the music industry, says that the last time the recording industry saw album sales climb was in 2004, when there were a dozen file-sharing services operating, including Grokster, eDonkey and BearShare. Rosso said plenty of studies show file sharing stimulates song sales.
“This minor blip is nothing to get too excited about,” Rosso said. “But it really shows it’s all about the product…music has to have legs. That’s what has been lost in the last decade: quality.”
It’s the music, stupid
Adele, the 23-year-old British singer-songwriter can certainly claim some credit for the increases. Her album “21″ was No. 1 in the year’s first half with 2.5 million albums sold. Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” was second with 1.5 million.
Certainly, a recent trend of retailers chopping at prices–none more so than Amazon–has helped lure music buyers. In May, the company stoked demand for “Born This Way” by offering the entire album for 99 cents. The digital stampede to the site ended up taking down Amazon’s servers.
Not every retailer has to cut that deeply, said Marmaduke, from Hastings Entertainment. He said some catalog CDs are selling well at between $3.99 and $7.99. “When you’re competing with rampant piracy,” Marmaduke said, “the best way to combat it is to lower prices.”
Russ Crupnick, NPD’s senior industry analyst, said price doesn’t mean much if the listener doesn’t like the song. He said his studies have shown people seem to be interested in music again. For this he credits some of the hot new acts as well as better music-discovery tools (Pandora, YouTube, and Slacker), listening devices (smart phones) and one factor that surprised him…
Is ‘cataclysmic drop’ over?
Crupnick suspects that the digital revolution might have finally burrowed down to the core CD fan. Anybody who is going to migrate to digital has done so, leaving a group of consumers who prefer to own discs rather than song files. For retailers and record companies, CDs traditionally produced better profit margins than digital albums.
“The cataclysmic drop in CD buyers may have stopped,” Crupnick said. “Between the years 2006 to 2009, the number of CD buyers dropped by around 20 million. We talk about young people and the lost generation but some of these younger music buyers are telling us ‘I want that thing I can hold, the liner notes and album cover and the other ancillary materials that come with physical products.”
In addition to selling books, the Borders chain was once a major music retailer. The company this year filed for bankruptcy protection and closed more than 200 stores.
None of the good news can erase the fact that the recording industry still faces plenty of threats and uncertainty.
The number of music retailers continues to fall. In the past 10 years, Tower, Virgin, and Circuit City disappeared. Earlier this year, Borders, the book merchant that also dedicated a big portion of floor space to CD sales, filed for bankruptcy protection and closed 226 stores. Music industry sources say that Best Buy, the consumer-electronics chain and one of the country’s largest music retailers, has warned record companies that they may follow Wal-Mart’s lead and reduce the floor space dedicated to CDs. A Best Buy spokeswoman declined to comment.
On the digital side, the news hasn’t been much better. Imeem, SpiralFrog, Ruckus, iLike, and MySpace Music are gone, either sold for pennies on the dollar or forced to shut down.
The labels, however, haven’t played all their cards. New music services from Google and Spotify are launching. The RIAA also isn’t letting up on antipiracy. On Thursday, the trade group announced that it had successfully enlisted the help of some of the country’s most powerful Internet service providers to combat illegal file sharing.
Any impacts this might have on sales won’t be felt for sometime. So, the next chance the industry will have to test its health will come next year, when it will learn whether this latest sales trend was just a blip or whether the times are a changing.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20077981-261/whats-driving-rise-in-music-sales/#ixzz1RhhNqtjD
Amazon offers unlimited Cloud music storage
Jul 6th
Amazon today announced a number of enhancements to its Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, including an unlimited music storage option and a Cloud Player for iPad.
For a limited time, Amazon customers who purchase a $20 annual Cloud Drive storage plan will receive unlimited storage space for their MP3 and AAC (.m4a) music files. Previously, Amazon Cloud customers automatically started with 5GB of free storage, upgradable to 20GB with the purchase of an Amazon MP3 album. Additional storage space could then be purchased in plans beginning at $20 per 20GB per year.
In comparison, Google Music Beta offers free storage for up to 20,000 songs, although it is unknown what if any subscription plans Google might offer. Meanwhile, Apple plans to launch its iTunes Match service in the fall, which will allow customers “back up” up to 20,000 non-iTunes music files to the cloud for $24.99 a year.
While Amazon customers can also upload photos, videos, and documents to Amazon’s Cloud, the unlimited storage offer applies only to music files. Amazon did not elaborate on how long the “limited time” offer would last.
In addition, storage of Amazon MP3 purchases will be free in the Cloud Drive, including all purchases made before the launch of Amazon Cloud. As before, Amazon MP3 purchases don’t count again customers’ Amazon Cloud Drive storage quota. Amazon said customers who qualified for 20GB of free storage from earlier promotions will receive the unlimited space for music at no additional cost.
Also new, Amazon announced it had release a Cloud Player for Web on iPad. As with Android smartphones, Android tablets, Macs, and PCs before it, the iPad owners will be able to play music files stored on Amazon’s Cloud servers as well as those stored on the device. However, conspicuously absent from the announcement was any mention of the service working on other iOS devices such as iPods and iPhones.
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