I started testing Google Music this weekend, because I have a MacBook Air with a measily 128GB SSD, well that's not the only reason. Call it lazy if you like but because I already have to keep my MP3 player, yes, MP3 player in sync with my PC doing the same with my laptop was quite annoying. All music gets converted down to 320kbps MP3, well if it's higher than that, that is, which is fine for my laptop/phone use, I do have a lot of lossless music but that only makes sense to have when I'm at home because that's when I'm using my proper headphones and not my portables.

The web interface is really nice and quick, moving between your music is instantaneous and since it's Google you can bet the search feature is quick & accurate with useful suggestions too. There's a few quirks though, for some reason the service randomly changed some tracks to full caps or other info, such as the name of an artist. I'm not sure why but it only happened a few times. Album art was kept intact mostly, need to fix it some of it but that's just me being a dork. Also, HTML5 support can be enabled in the labs section! Only downside is no Last.fm support. (yet)

I don't use my phone for music because touchscreens are annoying to use in the rain and require too many steps to get to the point where you're browsing your music. (esp. if you use lockscreen security) I have a little Sansa Clip+ with 40GB of space and good old fashioned physical buttons, durable as hell and I don't have to worry about using it in the rain.

I did install the app for my phone though and it's pretty swish, I'll definitely use it if I'm without my MP3 player, it's just not gonna be my go-to place for music. Oh and Google Music is free, well, you get to upload 20,000 tracks for free at least. Unfortunately it seems there's no official iPad app out yet, so hopefully that happens eventually.

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After 24 hours it has almost finished uploading everything so I can start using it properly on my laptop then. I have a 60MB connection with a horrible upload speed. (only 3MB up) It's meant to be US only, or something, but you can easily get around that. (Google it!)

Edit: Only just realised Tested has its blogs back up and running. Oops.

I may have to check this out. It looks like iTunes but not iTunes (a good thing). Is there any noticeable playback lag since it's streaming?

@Ravenlight said:

I may have to check this out. It looks like iTunes but not iTunes (a good thing). Is there any noticeable playback lag since it's streaming?

Super quick for me but I do have a pretty good connection, on my phone though on 3.5g it was quite fast at loading tracks, like a 2-3 sec delay usually.

I had about 60% of my music uploading only for me to stop after 2 days. The program itself is brilliant though.

I'll have to check it out once my internet service is set up at my new place.

Yep, I was using it before I got around to paying for Spotify Premium. I really liked the instant setlist feature- it seemed to do a good job of finding music which is similar in 'tone', if not genre.

I'm pretty invested in Amazon, but I use Google Music every now and then, and it's a great service.

@Ravenlight said:

I may have to check this out. It looks like iTunes but not iTunes (a good thing). Is there any noticeable playback lag since it's streaming?

Even on a slow connection, it's pretty peppy.

This seemed like a completely random and strange blog until I saw your edit at the end about Tested. I understand why this is here now.

Anyway, browse the Chrome Web Store for something along the lines of Google Music+ or Better Google Music, I can't remember the name. That adds a lot of nice functionality, including Last fm scrobbling.

@Apparatus_Unearth said:

I'm pretty invested in Amazon, but I use Google Music every now and then, and it's a great service.

I usually buy from Amazon, but I have things set up in a way where I can buy albums on Amazon and they'll download and then automatically upload to Google Music as well as be added to my Zune library. A one-click purchase and my music's in three different places! The future!

Yep, I was using it before I got around to paying for Spotify Premium. I really liked the instant setlist feature- it seemed to do a good job of finding music which is similar in 'tone', if not genre.

@Superanos said:

I wish Google Music would come outside the US, but music licensing is a bitch so I understand this restriction.

Download HotSpotShield, enable it, go to music.google.com, sign in with your account, turn off the HotSpot and sign in normally. You should have full access to the uploading/playback of music, but you can't browse the store.

Huzzah! Google Music anywhere.

@JJWeatherman: Nice I'll check those out!

I'm pretty much fully committed to using Amazon Cloud Player, and while I guess I could probably move over without too much hassle (just a lot of time waiting for stuff to upload)...I'm not sure that it's worth it.

I was about to mention Amazon Cloud Player as well. Its good to have plenty of options.

@Sooty: Fucking US only bullshit shits on me once again.

@Ravenlight: None at all, it's actually pretty fast when you think it's pulling this stuff from the internet. I haven't used it since last year when I had a G2, but even then it was flawless.

@ItBeStefYo said:

@Sooty: Fucking US only bullshit shits on me once again.

@Sooty said:

@Superanos said:

I wish Google Music would come outside the US, but music licensing is a bitch so I understand this restriction.

Download HotSpotShield, enable it, go to music.google.com, sign in with your account, turn off the HotSpot and sign in normally. You should have full access to the uploading/playback of music, but you can't browse the store.

Huzzah! Google Music anywhere.

I've made my choice with Music players on my computer. It's iTunes. Was it the right choice? Maybe, maybe not. But I've invested 8943 songs into this library. And my iPod Classic.

@ThePickle said:

I've made my choice with Music players on my computer. It's iTunes. Was it the right choice? Maybe, maybe not. But I've invested 8943 songs into this library. And my iPod Classic.

Well this isn't about local playback or purchasing music, this is just so I can access my music from any device with a web browser or app if I find myself without my MP3 player. I don't actually use this service very often but it's great I can access all this music online without having to keep my laptop and PC in sync manually. iTunes doesn't support FLAC either so that made it even more annoying keeping them in sync as I prefer to use iTunes on OS X.

For my PC I use Winamp and it's where all my lossless music is stored on.