12 ms·

Google Play Music – free, ad-supported radio

221 points by spankalee 11y ago

zatkin 11y ago
The competition for music is heating up!
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- dimino 11y ago
  Why can't you pay for Google Play Music?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- GI_Josh 11y ago
  This exists, and is called Google Play Music All Access.
gress 11y ago
Google announces me too...
- Oletros 11y ago
  What mee too? To Pandora?
thekevan 11y ago
Unless I'm missing something, this pretty much makes it a Pandora clone.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  As I see it, it now completely subsumes Pandora's main functionality leaving Pandora without any big distinguishing features (except perhaps an argument over whether its matching technology is better), but its not a Pandora clone, because Google Play Music still lets you manage your own library of music either purchased through Google Play or imported from elsewhere as well as providing free ad-supported and paid ad-free streaming.
GI_Josh 11y ago
Now that a portion of the service is going free, I'm interested to see if they start to add offerings to the paid, all access tier. As a paying monthly customer, I'd love to have the option to enable lossless streaming, for example.
- fpgeek 11y ago
  Well they did add YouTube Music Key (no ads, background play and offline access for many music videos) pretty recently, but they've done their typical terrible job of publicizing that.
dimino 11y ago
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.
- Aldo_MX 11y ago
  The sound quality leaves much to be desired.
  - Oletros 11y ago
    How so?
  - bluehazed 11y ago
    How? It's 320kbps.
    - Aldo_MX 11y ago
      Bitrate doesn't necessarily correlate with audio quality, you can even perceive noise or a drop of quality in the audio of the less popular songs. I'm seriously thinking that Google just licensed the audio they're streaming, but they didn't even care about getting proper audio files and they're simply streaming the audio their users uploaded.
      - zorlem 11y ago
        I highly doubt that. The risk is too high. In my country there was a big scandal a few years ago when a couple of radio stations started playing Billboard Hot 100 songs. I guess they couldn't source the new songs in time from reputable sources for some reason (licensing restrictions, logistical failure, no idea...). So they simply downloaded them from local torrent trackers. The thing blew up, because a guy that was uploading and seeding the albums put his own catchy promotional jingle in the middle of most songs.
      - snarf 11y ago
        I had the same observation about Google Play Music Radio's audio quality and came on here searching for the bit rate and codec thinking it must be lower for the free radio product in order to segment and further differentiate the paid tier (many services like Spotify, Rdio, and Pandora do this). I'm using an external DAC+headphone amp. Also, note that the codec matters. AAC is supposedly twice as efficient as MP3. iTunes Radio, which streams at 256kbps AAC, sounds better to me.
jakebasile 11y ago
I enjoy Google Play Music and use it daily (the paid version). I prefer it over Spotify/Rdio/Beats because it works better with Google Now voice actions, and I can run it well on every device I care to. My remaining problem with it is their device limit. You can have 10 total devices, but you can deauthorize only 4 per year. This sounds like a lot but if you switch phones often or flash new ROMs you can use it up pretty quickly. In addition, if you upload music to the service the computer you use counts as a device. Once you're at your limit there's little you can do and you have no information on when you'll get a device deauthorization "credit" again. I had to call Google to get a one-time reset of my authorizations but it would be nice if they could modernize this some; such as by only using an authorization if you download music to the device for offline listening.
- jdjb 11y ago
  My bigger issue that two clients cannot be listening to music at the same time, even if you're a paying member. I'll often forget to stop streaming the music at work and start listening to it on the bus on the way home. My workstation at work then fights for control of the service with my phone and every other song drops out with "another device is using the service".
  - Roritharr 11y ago
    As a workaround i've setup Chrome Remote Desktop at any PC i use, so I can easily connect to them without much network hassle and turn off stuff like Google Music.
    - Pxtl 11y ago
      Seems like a pop-up implementing this would be ideal, since it's most often accidental: "Hey, this is still running on another device, and you're only allowed 1 device at a time - do you want me to remotely kill the other device's Google Music session?" After all, most of the time it's not another human using both sessions at once.
  - mattmanser 11y ago
omouse 11y ago
Is there a reason why no one has tried to add 10 to 30 second spots to these streaming services? Is the temptation to have ad spots after every song too great to resist? Or are ad spots just too hard to measure and often times ineffective?
- hyperion_ 11y ago
  I remember using Spotify many years ago, and back then they played an ad spot every few songs (not every song), so it has been tried at least.
  - malnourish 11y ago
    Isn't that also how Pandora (free tier) works?
- btbuildem 11y ago
  A 30 second spot after each song is simply too obnoxious - you'd lose users faster than you can say "monetizing advertising" (even in that annoying sped-up commercial voice).
andmarios 11y ago
A bit offtopic but I am a Google Play Music subscriber. I switched to them over Spotify because they had a much better UI and UX. I use these music services at the radio mode mostly and I am pretty sure Spotify's designers primary concern was how to make users' experience miserable. Unfortunately Google seems to follow the trend nowadays. Take for example the Play Music Radio Page. There is a list with photos and titles of my favorite songs. For every song there are 4 links, one on the thumbnail, one on the play button inside the thumbnail, one on the title of the song and one under the thumbnail that opens a menu with additional options. The thing is that none of these links and options plays the song displayed. Clicking on the song's title, plays an entirely different song! Even worse and I think this may indicates the absence of serious dogfooding, is that I can't anymore select text on the page. Same did spotify. So I can't play the song and I can't copy-paste its title in the search bar. Instead I either have to type the title manually or go and search my library.
- mattmanser 11y ago
  UI/UX is subjective. My recent thoughts on the new UX from google is that it's bloody awful. When I just want to listen to some random music I just play my thumbs up playlist. But every time I open Google play, you have to click to open the hamburger menu because menus are no longer trendy on desktop sites. Want to have a list of what's playing be your homepage? Impossible in the new google play, you can only view the playlist in a popup. Also, it's terrible for music discovery and totally (if unintentionally) chauvinistic. Their algo is bloody awful, it seems to use one song as the basis for "I'm feeling lucky" and never mixes up genres. Also, related artists to females? Other females! I like quite a few female artists, but if you click "I'm feeling lucky" there's a 20% chance google music will only play me female artists. And it will spiral into genres I don't even like and have no songs thumbed up, purely because they're female too. It will never play related artists from a different sex. I've got a couple of screenies somewhere of a list of 50 odd songs recommended to me, all female artists.
  - andmarios 11y ago
    The radio algorithm is good though, much better than spotify's. For example I listen to a lively rock or pop song and ask “play music” to start a radio station based on that; it will continue with lively songs of the same genre. On contrary spotify would either continue with rock ballads or slow pop songs. It seemed to me that spotify doesn't understand the context of the song (not sure if this is the right word), instead it reads a generic genre and tries to play something from the billboards. It would continue with ballads even when I started a radio station with a power/death/thrash metal song!
mizzack 11y ago
These activity based stations/playlists are all available on Songza... Which, by the way, is free and ad-free. Not sure what I'm missing, here.
- Oletros 11y ago
  Google bought Songza last year
  - mizzack 11y ago
    Right. The playlists are the same, the activities are the same. Songza still doesn't have ads -- but this does.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mrinterweb 11y ago
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.
- rsanheim 11y ago
  Have you looked at Radiant Player? http://www.sajidanwar.me/radiant-player-mac/ http://www.sajidanwar.me/radiant-player-mac/
  - rhodysurf 11y ago
    I tried this for a while and it was slow and crashed pretty much every time I used it. Sucks because it was exactly what I needed.
    - piquadrat 11y ago
      When did you try it the last time? I never had stability issues with recent versions. Sometimes (very seldom) it ends up eating 100% CPU, but restarting it fixes that.
    - kbhomes 11y ago
      Creator of Radiant Player here. Performance and memory issues were a problem in the past and unfortunately have resurfaced in the latest release (1.4.0), but I am looking into them!
      - rhodysurf 11y ago
        Thanks! I really want to use it so Ill be looking out for future releases
      - zer0zzz 11y ago
        Hi there, do you know what's up with HTML5 audio lately?
Mahn 11y ago
I've been considering subscribing to a music service lately, but there are so many nowadays that I have honestly no idea how to decide. For those of you with experience in this area, what criteria would you recommend? what should I look for, other than the music itself?
- jakebasile 11y ago
  Personally, I look to integration. Does it work on the devices you want to use it on? Does it integrate with some other service you want to use it with? From my experience, most of the large streaming services out there are roughly equivalent on music selection and sound quality, so all that matters is how I can use it, not what I can play on it.
- chrisper 11y ago
  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 "Android" app on my iPhone. If you have an Android, I'd go with Google Play Music.
  - naspinski 11y ago
    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"?
    - chrisper 11y ago
      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.
  - spankalee 11y ago
    What "integration" are you seeking?
fenomas 11y ago
Unfortunately still region locked where I am (Japan). All the other various streaming services seem to work here - I wonder what the issue is for Google's?
- slantyyz 11y ago
  I'm kinda surprised, it's working for me in Canada even though it's only supposed to be for the US. Also I don't understand what they mean by "ad supported". How will that work? I am not a paid user, and I've been listening for almost an hour and still haven't heard one ad yet.
rip747 11y ago
Been an iHeartRadio fan for a few months now. Love the fact that they normal only play an ad when you first load it and thats it (and usually its an AllState ad with Dean Winters who was AWESOME in Oz). Never really gave Google Play Music a shot since, quite honestly, no one every talks about it. I've tried Pandora and Spotify and they weren't all that great. Well Pandora was only good because if you install AdBlock you never got ads. I'll have to try it out and see if maybe a switch is in my future.
aikah 11y ago
Yay , more micro dollars for artists ...
- greggman 11y ago
  vs? I don't know what Google Play pays. I guess I assume it's similar to Spotify which at least by one accounting is much more than radio https://news.spotify.com/us/2014/11/11/2-billion-and-counting/ https://news.spotify.com/us/2014/11/11/2-billion-and-countin...
- fizzbatter 11y ago
  If only Music Artists didn't get ripped off by Recording Labels. Streaming isn't the problem imo, Artists making $21 for every $1000[1] is the problem Yes, you make "less" on a Streaming service than me paying you $10, but if you decide to both have a label which takes 98% of your profit, AND allow your music to be Streamed (which offers a better UX, but less direct monitization), then you're making poor choices, imo. Streaming services (music/movies/etc) are becoming standard because the UX is excellent. They may need some tweaking, but it is a painless UX. Imo, they're here to stay, and for good reason. [1]: as i last saw from another HNer, when these conversations get repeatedly brought up. Unfortunately i don't have the cite.
whatok 11y ago
Being able to upload your own music has been the only reason why I use this. I have a lot of mixes that aren't commercially available so this is basically the only way I can listen to them without having the actual MP3s on whatever device I happen to be using.
Someone1234 11y ago
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 video within a few seconds I get an error telling me I am already playing media on that device (or similar). What does YouTube have to do with Google Play Music anyway? YouTube is ad supported, Google Play isn't. There is no cross-over. This issue shouldn't be a "thing." Plus I might be watching a YouTube video muted and listening to music (yes, people do that!). - The new interface is arguably a step backwards (just like every Google Maps update). You keep "simplifying" away functionality. - 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.
- AceJohnny2 11y ago
  > What does YouTube have to do with Google Play Music anyway? YouTube is ad supported, Google Play isn't. There is no cross-over. There is actually cross-over, whether you like it or not (most people don't). Youtube Music Key: https://www.youtube.com/musickey https://www.youtube.com/musickey http://lifehacker.com/whats-the-point-of-youtube-music-key-1662612843 http://lifehacker.com/whats-the-point-of-youtube-music-key-1...
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    Fair enough. But it is still a bug that even after pausing All Access, YouTube takes a complete reload to work.
  - pgm8705 11y ago
    It's pretty nice to not have to deal with ads while watching live shows, music videos, etc on youtube. For me it was a welcomed addition to what I was already paying for.
neves 11y ago
My Google play killer feature happened other day and wasn't even announced. They increased the amount of music you can store from 20.000 to 50.000. I have a very large collection of independent Brazilian music. You can't find these kind of music in any streaming service. Now I can have a cloud backup of all my music for free! And I also can here it anywhere. I even bought a new CD reader and resumed to rip my music collection. My great fear of these services is that you will have a less diverse music ecosystem. Sure the average Anglo-American listener has a lot more options, but if you want to learn about other cultures, you are toast.
- slantyyz 11y ago
  I thought they did this in February? I specifically joined when it was announced. http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/25/google-play-music-50000/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/25/google-play-music-50000/
- aiiane 11y ago
  https://play.google.com/store/music/category/WORLD https://play.google.com/store/music/category/WORLD - it's a decent start, and it'll almost certainly continue to get larger.
makeitsuckless 11y ago
ad supported <> free I wish people would stop echoing that. It would make it so much more possible to have a meaningful discourse about ad supported business models. We don't call anything else that requires something in return "free"
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  Well sure we do. We call "free software" free, even though it requires that any distributed changes are accompanied with source. Of course, the free software people are also constantly up in arms that the world doesn't use their specific desired definitions of words. I guess you're in good company.
- dtparr 11y ago
  Don't we? I think most people would describe terrestrial radio, OTA television, etc. as 'free'.
infinitone 11y ago
Is there a full in depth comparison between all these streaming services? I use Spotify, but I'd like to know if I should switch- the main feature I'm looking for is better recommendations/discovery. Also it'd be nice to see actual # of songs each of these services actually have.
- joshstrange 11y ago
  I too would like to see such a comparison but # of songs isn't the important metric for me, it's # of songs I want to listen to. That's why I hate that metric, really just tell me which artists you have (or don't have, though this would never happen) that other services do not...
- sinatra 11y ago
  They all have almost same (number of) songs.
- spankalee 11y ago
  To me the killer feature combination of Play Music is the unlimited streaming + the music locker. If something's not available for streaming, or in the store, you can upload it yourself.
tosseraccount 11y ago
Whatever happened to Icecast, Shoutcast and just listening to a stream from a radio station?
guelo 11y ago
Do they have Taylor Swift's stuff?
- cheald 11y ago
  It doesn't have 1989, but her other stuff is there.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
guelo 11y ago
It's smart marketing to have an announcement this week to steal some of Apple's free press.
ericdykstra 11y ago
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 music product don't care that only pennies of that actually goes to the artists. All that the shift to all-you-can-eat streaming services has done is make it so that people feel they don't need to buy music (since they're paying for the right to stream any time, there's no value in purchasing a copy) and shift where the money goes away from artists. I'm going to stick with supporting musicians directly, and do what I can to let people know that it's not that hard to do the same, and that artists appreciate even a little bit of support a LOT.
- spankalee 11y ago
  Well, you'll be happy to know that you can still buy albums and songs through Google Play (and all the other stores).
- lintroller 11y ago
  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.
  - psychometry 11y ago
    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%.
  - ericdykstra 11y ago
    I don't purchase music from iTunes. I give money directly to artists in any way I can. Whether it's merch, handing money over for a CD directly, buying them a drink, whatever. Here's something to try. Think about some songs or some album you go back to over and over. Think about the way the music makes you feel, if it lifts your mood, lets you concentrate, or in any way improves your day. How grateful are you for that great 4 minute track? Or for the 50 minute album you played at twice per week last summer? Did each listen of that song bring you 5 cents worth of joy? Or maybe even just 2 cents? If you have a last.fm account, you can look at your plays and total it up. I have well over 5000 plays for my most listened-to artist. The next time I see them, I can give them $100 in return for nothing, and just say "thank you" for making great music and encourage them to make more. It's not about these companies being evil, or the business model being wrong. It's that very rarely does anyone consider the people behind the works that they listen to every day, even if that music has some personal importance or sentimentality. The reality is that those people who put out your favorite album are probably working part time jobs just to keep producing music, even if they have enough notoriety to be invited to international music festivals, or are even lucky enough to have a song licensed for a tv show or commercial. Musicians will continue to make music out of passion, even if they have no hope or even aspiration of commercial success. Any bit of encouragement and support you can give will give them extra motivation to keep producing music, which is a benefit to you, as a fan of what they do, and also a benefit to other fans. I'm probably just rambling to a wall here, but if you're someone who has their day slightly improved by music, take some time to consider if you want to be one of the few who supports the people who make your life better. Because they certainly aren't being supported by the services that you're using to listen to them.
simon_weber 11y ago
I wonder what this means for the folks using unofficial clients? I know there are clients for Mopidy and Squeezebox built with https://github.com/simon-weber/gmusicapi https://github.com/simon-weber/gmusicapi.
0xFFC 11y ago
Personally I prefer Spotify over Google Play Music or Apple Music, I don't know, I really care about startups and I think Google and Apple becoming to a hungry companies which eats other ones idea with their unlimited budget.
- bitmapbrother 11y ago
  LOL You care about startups? Then you should care about their investors....which are the music labels.
Animats 11y ago
Anyone working on an ad blocker?
hedgew 11y ago
The main reason I won't use Google Music is the lack of playlist folders. There's no way to organize playlists, and the player becomes quite unusable if you have even a few dozen playlists. I'm surely not the only one who likes making and sharing playlists for different moods and occasions. It would be interesting to know why such a simple yet important feature is missing.
- eterm 11y ago
  Google doesn't really do folders (see gmail), but playlist tagging would certainly be a feature I'd appreciate. I personally am finding they are going backward though, I've been a subscriber for a while but they've just removed the radio icon over radio stations so it's hard to see in the recent activity whether it was a radio or actual album.
astaroth360 11y ago
Ha, awesome, hopefully this takes any wind that was there out of Apple's sails(and sales), heh. Once again, Apple puts out a feature 5 years late and is praised...
baggachipz 11y ago
I'd gladly switch to this service if they didn't count it against my data allotment in Project Fi.
guelo 11y ago
I've been listening for an hour and haven't heard an ad. Weird.
hobarrera 11y ago
"free" and "ad-supported" are mutually exclusive if you ask me.
NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
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...).
Yuioup 11y ago
"Free, ad-supported radio". You mean like ... real radio right?
sytelus 11y ago
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.
albatross_down 11y ago
Is anyone else extremely annoyed by the album art animation? The animation zooms in so far that you can only see half of the album, which defeats the purpose.

221 points by spankalee 11y ago

zatkin 11y ago

The competition for music is heating up!

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dimino 11y ago
Why can't you pay for Google Play Music?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
GI_Josh 11y ago
This exists, and is called Google Play Music All Access.

gress 11y ago

Google announces me too...

Oletros 11y ago
What mee too? To Pandora?

thekevan 11y ago

Unless I'm missing something, this pretty much makes it a Pandora clone.

dragonwriter 11y ago
As I see it, it now completely subsumes Pandora's main functionality leaving Pandora without any big distinguishing features (except perhaps an argument over whether its matching technology is better), but its not a Pandora clone, because Google Play Music still lets you manage your own library of music either purchased through Google Play or imported from elsewhere as well as providing free ad-supported and paid ad-free streaming.

GI_Josh 11y ago

Now that a portion of the service is going free, I'm interested to see if they start to add offerings to the paid, all access tier. As a paying monthly customer, I'd love to have the option to enable lossless streaming, for example.

fpgeek 11y ago
Well they did add YouTube Music Key (no ads, background play and offline access for many music videos) pretty recently, but they've done their typical terrible job of publicizing that.

dimino 11y ago

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.

Aldo_MX 11y ago
The sound quality leaves much to be desired.
- Oletros 11y ago
  How so?
- bluehazed 11y ago
  How? It's 320kbps.
  - Aldo_MX 11y ago
    Bitrate doesn't necessarily correlate with audio quality, you can even perceive noise or a drop of quality in the audio of the less popular songs. I'm seriously thinking that Google just licensed the audio they're streaming, but they didn't even care about getting proper audio files and they're simply streaming the audio their users uploaded.
    - zorlem 11y ago
      I highly doubt that. The risk is too high. In my country there was a big scandal a few years ago when a couple of radio stations started playing Billboard Hot 100 songs. I guess they couldn't source the new songs in time from reputable sources for some reason (licensing restrictions, logistical failure, no idea...). So they simply downloaded them from local torrent trackers. The thing blew up, because a guy that was uploading and seeding the albums put his own catchy promotional jingle in the middle of most songs.
    - snarf 11y ago
      I had the same observation about Google Play Music Radio's audio quality and came on here searching for the bit rate and codec thinking it must be lower for the free radio product in order to segment and further differentiate the paid tier (many services like Spotify, Rdio, and Pandora do this). I'm using an external DAC+headphone amp. Also, note that the codec matters. AAC is supposedly twice as efficient as MP3. iTunes Radio, which streams at 256kbps AAC, sounds better to me.

jakebasile 11y ago

I enjoy Google Play Music and use it daily (the paid version). I prefer it over Spotify/Rdio/Beats because it works better with Google Now voice actions, and I can run it well on every device I care to. My remaining problem with it is their device limit. You can have 10 total devices, but you can deauthorize only 4 per year. This sounds like a lot but if you switch phones often or flash new ROMs you can use it up pretty quickly. In addition, if you upload music to the service the computer you use counts as a device. Once you're at your limit there's little you can do and you have no information on when you'll get a device deauthorization "credit" again. I had to call Google to get a one-time reset of my authorizations but it would be nice if they could modernize this some; such as by only using an authorization if you download music to the device for offline listening.

jdjb 11y ago
My bigger issue that two clients cannot be listening to music at the same time, even if you're a paying member. I'll often forget to stop streaming the music at work and start listening to it on the bus on the way home. My workstation at work then fights for control of the service with my phone and every other song drops out with "another device is using the service".
- Roritharr 11y ago
  As a workaround i've setup Chrome Remote Desktop at any PC i use, so I can easily connect to them without much network hassle and turn off stuff like Google Music.
  - Pxtl 11y ago
    Seems like a pop-up implementing this would be ideal, since it's most often accidental: "Hey, this is still running on another device, and you're only allowed 1 device at a time - do you want me to remotely kill the other device's Google Music session?" After all, most of the time it's not another human using both sessions at once.
- mattmanser 11y ago

omouse 11y ago

Is there a reason why no one has tried to add 10 to 30 second spots to these streaming services? Is the temptation to have ad spots after every song too great to resist? Or are ad spots just too hard to measure and often times ineffective?

hyperion_ 11y ago
I remember using Spotify many years ago, and back then they played an ad spot every few songs (not every song), so it has been tried at least.
- malnourish 11y ago
  Isn't that also how Pandora (free tier) works?
btbuildem 11y ago
A 30 second spot after each song is simply too obnoxious - you'd lose users faster than you can say "monetizing advertising" (even in that annoying sped-up commercial voice).

andmarios 11y ago

A bit offtopic but I am a Google Play Music subscriber. I switched to them over Spotify because they had a much better UI and UX. I use these music services at the radio mode mostly and I am pretty sure Spotify's designers primary concern was how to make users' experience miserable. Unfortunately Google seems to follow the trend nowadays. Take for example the Play Music Radio Page. There is a list with photos and titles of my favorite songs. For every song there are 4 links, one on the thumbnail, one on the play button inside the thumbnail, one on the title of the song and one under the thumbnail that opens a menu with additional options. The thing is that none of these links and options plays the song displayed. Clicking on the song's title, plays an entirely different song! Even worse and I think this may indicates the absence of serious dogfooding, is that I can't anymore select text on the page. Same did spotify. So I can't play the song and I can't copy-paste its title in the search bar. Instead I either have to type the title manually or go and search my library.

mattmanser 11y ago
UI/UX is subjective. My recent thoughts on the new UX from google is that it's bloody awful. When I just want to listen to some random music I just play my thumbs up playlist. But every time I open Google play, you have to click to open the hamburger menu because menus are no longer trendy on desktop sites. Want to have a list of what's playing be your homepage? Impossible in the new google play, you can only view the playlist in a popup. Also, it's terrible for music discovery and totally (if unintentionally) chauvinistic. Their algo is bloody awful, it seems to use one song as the basis for "I'm feeling lucky" and never mixes up genres. Also, related artists to females? Other females! I like quite a few female artists, but if you click "I'm feeling lucky" there's a 20% chance google music will only play me female artists. And it will spiral into genres I don't even like and have no songs thumbed up, purely because they're female too. It will never play related artists from a different sex. I've got a couple of screenies somewhere of a list of 50 odd songs recommended to me, all female artists.
- andmarios 11y ago
  The radio algorithm is good though, much better than spotify's. For example I listen to a lively rock or pop song and ask “play music” to start a radio station based on that; it will continue with lively songs of the same genre. On contrary spotify would either continue with rock ballads or slow pop songs. It seemed to me that spotify doesn't understand the context of the song (not sure if this is the right word), instead it reads a generic genre and tries to play something from the billboards. It would continue with ballads even when I started a radio station with a power/death/thrash metal song!

mizzack 11y ago

These activity based stations/playlists are all available on Songza... Which, by the way, is free and ad-free. Not sure what I'm missing, here.

Oletros 11y ago
Google bought Songza last year
- mizzack 11y ago
  Right. The playlists are the same, the activities are the same. Songza still doesn't have ads -- but this does.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

mrinterweb 11y ago

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.

rsanheim 11y ago
Have you looked at Radiant Player? http://www.sajidanwar.me/radiant-player-mac/ http://www.sajidanwar.me/radiant-player-mac/
- rhodysurf 11y ago
  I tried this for a while and it was slow and crashed pretty much every time I used it. Sucks because it was exactly what I needed.
  - piquadrat 11y ago
    When did you try it the last time? I never had stability issues with recent versions. Sometimes (very seldom) it ends up eating 100% CPU, but restarting it fixes that.
  - kbhomes 11y ago
    Creator of Radiant Player here. Performance and memory issues were a problem in the past and unfortunately have resurfaced in the latest release (1.4.0), but I am looking into them!
    - rhodysurf 11y ago
      Thanks! I really want to use it so Ill be looking out for future releases
    - zer0zzz 11y ago
      Hi there, do you know what's up with HTML5 audio lately?

Mahn 11y ago

I've been considering subscribing to a music service lately, but there are so many nowadays that I have honestly no idea how to decide. For those of you with experience in this area, what criteria would you recommend? what should I look for, other than the music itself?

jakebasile 11y ago
Personally, I look to integration. Does it work on the devices you want to use it on? Does it integrate with some other service you want to use it with? From my experience, most of the large streaming services out there are roughly equivalent on music selection and sound quality, so all that matters is how I can use it, not what I can play on it.
chrisper 11y ago
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 "Android" app on my iPhone. If you have an Android, I'd go with Google Play Music.
- naspinski 11y ago
  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"?
  - chrisper 11y ago
    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.
- spankalee 11y ago
  What "integration" are you seeking?

fenomas 11y ago

Unfortunately still region locked where I am (Japan). All the other various streaming services seem to work here - I wonder what the issue is for Google's?

slantyyz 11y ago
I'm kinda surprised, it's working for me in Canada even though it's only supposed to be for the US. Also I don't understand what they mean by "ad supported". How will that work? I am not a paid user, and I've been listening for almost an hour and still haven't heard one ad yet.

rip747 11y ago

Been an iHeartRadio fan for a few months now. Love the fact that they normal only play an ad when you first load it and thats it (and usually its an AllState ad with Dean Winters who was AWESOME in Oz). Never really gave Google Play Music a shot since, quite honestly, no one every talks about it. I've tried Pandora and Spotify and they weren't all that great. Well Pandora was only good because if you install AdBlock you never got ads. I'll have to try it out and see if maybe a switch is in my future.

aikah 11y ago

Yay , more micro dollars for artists ...

greggman 11y ago
vs? I don't know what Google Play pays. I guess I assume it's similar to Spotify which at least by one accounting is much more than radio https://news.spotify.com/us/2014/11/11/2-billion-and-counting/ https://news.spotify.com/us/2014/11/11/2-billion-and-countin...
fizzbatter 11y ago
If only Music Artists didn't get ripped off by Recording Labels. Streaming isn't the problem imo, Artists making $21 for every $1000[1] is the problem Yes, you make "less" on a Streaming service than me paying you $10, but if you decide to both have a label which takes 98% of your profit, AND allow your music to be Streamed (which offers a better UX, but less direct monitization), then you're making poor choices, imo. Streaming services (music/movies/etc) are becoming standard because the UX is excellent. They may need some tweaking, but it is a painless UX. Imo, they're here to stay, and for good reason. [1]: as i last saw from another HNer, when these conversations get repeatedly brought up. Unfortunately i don't have the cite.

whatok 11y ago

Being able to upload your own music has been the only reason why I use this. I have a lot of mixes that aren't commercially available so this is basically the only way I can listen to them without having the actual MP3s on whatever device I happen to be using.

Someone1234 11y ago

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 video within a few seconds I get an error telling me I am already playing media on that device (or similar). What does YouTube have to do with Google Play Music anyway? YouTube is ad supported, Google Play isn't. There is no cross-over. This issue shouldn't be a "thing." Plus I might be watching a YouTube video muted and listening to music (yes, people do that!). - The new interface is arguably a step backwards (just like every Google Maps update). You keep "simplifying" away functionality. - 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.

AceJohnny2 11y ago
> What does YouTube have to do with Google Play Music anyway? YouTube is ad supported, Google Play isn't. There is no cross-over. There is actually cross-over, whether you like it or not (most people don't). Youtube Music Key: https://www.youtube.com/musickey https://www.youtube.com/musickey http://lifehacker.com/whats-the-point-of-youtube-music-key-1662612843 http://lifehacker.com/whats-the-point-of-youtube-music-key-1...
- Someone1234 11y ago
  Fair enough. But it is still a bug that even after pausing All Access, YouTube takes a complete reload to work.
- pgm8705 11y ago
  It's pretty nice to not have to deal with ads while watching live shows, music videos, etc on youtube. For me it was a welcomed addition to what I was already paying for.

neves 11y ago

My Google play killer feature happened other day and wasn't even announced. They increased the amount of music you can store from 20.000 to 50.000. I have a very large collection of independent Brazilian music. You can't find these kind of music in any streaming service. Now I can have a cloud backup of all my music for free! And I also can here it anywhere. I even bought a new CD reader and resumed to rip my music collection. My great fear of these services is that you will have a less diverse music ecosystem. Sure the average Anglo-American listener has a lot more options, but if you want to learn about other cultures, you are toast.

slantyyz 11y ago
I thought they did this in February? I specifically joined when it was announced. http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/25/google-play-music-50000/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/25/google-play-music-50000/
aiiane 11y ago
https://play.google.com/store/music/category/WORLD https://play.google.com/store/music/category/WORLD - it's a decent start, and it'll almost certainly continue to get larger.

makeitsuckless 11y ago

ad supported <> free I wish people would stop echoing that. It would make it so much more possible to have a meaningful discourse about ad supported business models. We don't call anything else that requires something in return "free"

oldmanjay 11y ago
Well sure we do. We call "free software" free, even though it requires that any distributed changes are accompanied with source. Of course, the free software people are also constantly up in arms that the world doesn't use their specific desired definitions of words. I guess you're in good company.
dtparr 11y ago
Don't we? I think most people would describe terrestrial radio, OTA television, etc. as 'free'.

infinitone 11y ago

Is there a full in depth comparison between all these streaming services? I use Spotify, but I'd like to know if I should switch- the main feature I'm looking for is better recommendations/discovery. Also it'd be nice to see actual # of songs each of these services actually have.

joshstrange 11y ago
I too would like to see such a comparison but # of songs isn't the important metric for me, it's # of songs I want to listen to. That's why I hate that metric, really just tell me which artists you have (or don't have, though this would never happen) that other services do not...
sinatra 11y ago
They all have almost same (number of) songs.
spankalee 11y ago
To me the killer feature combination of Play Music is the unlimited streaming + the music locker. If something's not available for streaming, or in the store, you can upload it yourself.

tosseraccount 11y ago

Whatever happened to Icecast, Shoutcast and just listening to a stream from a radio station?

guelo 11y ago

Do they have Taylor Swift's stuff?

cheald 11y ago
It doesn't have 1989, but her other stuff is there.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

guelo 11y ago

It's smart marketing to have an announcement this week to steal some of Apple's free press.

ericdykstra 11y ago

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 music product don't care that only pennies of that actually goes to the artists. All that the shift to all-you-can-eat streaming services has done is make it so that people feel they don't need to buy music (since they're paying for the right to stream any time, there's no value in purchasing a copy) and shift where the money goes away from artists. I'm going to stick with supporting musicians directly, and do what I can to let people know that it's not that hard to do the same, and that artists appreciate even a little bit of support a LOT.

spankalee 11y ago
Well, you'll be happy to know that you can still buy albums and songs through Google Play (and all the other stores).
lintroller 11y ago
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.
- psychometry 11y ago
  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%.
- ericdykstra 11y ago
  I don't purchase music from iTunes. I give money directly to artists in any way I can. Whether it's merch, handing money over for a CD directly, buying them a drink, whatever. Here's something to try. Think about some songs or some album you go back to over and over. Think about the way the music makes you feel, if it lifts your mood, lets you concentrate, or in any way improves your day. How grateful are you for that great 4 minute track? Or for the 50 minute album you played at twice per week last summer? Did each listen of that song bring you 5 cents worth of joy? Or maybe even just 2 cents? If you have a last.fm account, you can look at your plays and total it up. I have well over 5000 plays for my most listened-to artist. The next time I see them, I can give them $100 in return for nothing, and just say "thank you" for making great music and encourage them to make more. It's not about these companies being evil, or the business model being wrong. It's that very rarely does anyone consider the people behind the works that they listen to every day, even if that music has some personal importance or sentimentality. The reality is that those people who put out your favorite album are probably working part time jobs just to keep producing music, even if they have enough notoriety to be invited to international music festivals, or are even lucky enough to have a song licensed for a tv show or commercial. Musicians will continue to make music out of passion, even if they have no hope or even aspiration of commercial success. Any bit of encouragement and support you can give will give them extra motivation to keep producing music, which is a benefit to you, as a fan of what they do, and also a benefit to other fans. I'm probably just rambling to a wall here, but if you're someone who has their day slightly improved by music, take some time to consider if you want to be one of the few who supports the people who make your life better. Because they certainly aren't being supported by the services that you're using to listen to them.

simon_weber 11y ago

I wonder what this means for the folks using unofficial clients? I know there are clients for Mopidy and Squeezebox built with https://github.com/simon-weber/gmusicapi https://github.com/simon-weber/gmusicapi.

0xFFC 11y ago

Personally I prefer Spotify over Google Play Music or Apple Music, I don't know, I really care about startups and I think Google and Apple becoming to a hungry companies which eats other ones idea with their unlimited budget.

bitmapbrother 11y ago
LOL You care about startups? Then you should care about their investors....which are the music labels.

Animats 11y ago

Anyone working on an ad blocker?

hedgew 11y ago

The main reason I won't use Google Music is the lack of playlist folders. There's no way to organize playlists, and the player becomes quite unusable if you have even a few dozen playlists. I'm surely not the only one who likes making and sharing playlists for different moods and occasions. It would be interesting to know why such a simple yet important feature is missing.

eterm 11y ago
Google doesn't really do folders (see gmail), but playlist tagging would certainly be a feature I'd appreciate. I personally am finding they are going backward though, I've been a subscriber for a while but they've just removed the radio icon over radio stations so it's hard to see in the recent activity whether it was a radio or actual album.

astaroth360 11y ago

Ha, awesome, hopefully this takes any wind that was there out of Apple's sails(and sales), heh. Once again, Apple puts out a feature 5 years late and is praised...

baggachipz 11y ago

I'd gladly switch to this service if they didn't count it against my data allotment in Project Fi.

guelo 11y ago

I've been listening for an hour and haven't heard an ad. Weird.

hobarrera 11y ago

"free" and "ad-supported" are mutually exclusive if you ask me.

NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago

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...).

Yuioup 11y ago

"Free, ad-supported radio". You mean like ... real radio right?

sytelus 11y ago

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.

albatross_down 11y ago

Is anyone else extremely annoyed by the album art animation? The animation zooms in so far that you can only see half of the album, which defeats the purpose.