Google Music users, you can breathe a slight sigh of relief, but don’t get too excited. Google has finally enabled a way for you to retrieve the music you upload to its new music storage locker service. The announcement was made on the official Google+ page for Android and verified by a new help article on the Android Market Web site.
Using the Windows or Mac desktop PC client, you can now click one of two options. You can “Download my library” or “Download purchased music.” One of these options presumably downloads only the music you purchased from Google, while the other lets you download all of the music tracks that you have personally uploaded to the service.
A confused cloud
After hearing this news, I tried out the updated app on my Windows 7 machine this morning to mixed results. While it definitely seems to work (it downloads tracks), Google’s new download feature is extremely limited in functionality and its ability to detect which songs are purchased is completely broken. I tried to download only my “purchased music,” thinking that there would be nothing in there except for the few free songs I’ve downloaded on Google Music, but to my surprise, Google Music believes that it now owns a hefty portion of my music library. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of tracks that were ripped from CDs, purchased on Amazon MP3, and given to me by friends are now all labeled as Google Music purchases for no good reason. If this wasn’t frustrating enough, to download music, you can only download all of it. For me, that means I have to download all 7,900 songs I’ve uploaded to Google Music.
There are options to download tracks from http://music.google.com, but you can only download each song or album two times. Yep, two (2) times…forever. If your computer is acting up and you don’t finish a download, well, too bad; you’ll have to use your last download to get your songs. Google announced this limitation for music purchased through Google, but it seems to apply to all music, even the music that you own and have uploaded to Google Music.
This album (above) was purchased and downloaded from AmazonMP3, and uploaded to Google Music. Google has no ownership of it, yet I am only allowed to download it once. If you download an album, but have already downloaded one of the songs on that album twice, that song will be skipped and you will be prompted to use the Music Manager to get the song. That means you’ll have to download thousands of items to get a single song. The Manager does have one good feature: You can choose to download only the songs that were added since your last mass download. This is useful, but we hope Google adds an auto-download feature that automatically downloads tracks to a PC when it’s added to Google Music. Moreover, it should be possible to upload tracks from an Android phone or tablet.
On top of these troubles, Google’s Music Manager uploading has not operated well since launch. The software is a bandwidth hog, even when its upload speeds are dialed down. It seems to upload incredibly slowly, no matter what you do. I’ve been uploading my collection off and on since the service launched in June 2011, and have still only uploaded about 7,900 songs out of 12,000+. I don’t have a particularly slow connection either. I imagine if I let Google Music run straight and kept my computer on at night, it might take about a month to upload my tracks, maybe longer.
Certain track features, like song ratings (1-5 stars) are not pulled in and converted into Google’s Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down system either, meaning hardcore users will have to re-rank their music.
Android pinning problems
I realize that this is a free service, and that Google has to deal with a lot of backward thinking music labels, but these limitations are confusing. Music labels may have good reason to force users onto a PC before they can download tracks, but it’s harmful to the entire experience. You cannot download unrestricted Google Music songs to an Android device either. You can choose to “Pin for offline” any album, artist, or track, but those songs are not available outside of Google Music and there is no download dialog for them, so you don’t know if they are actually “pinned” to your phone or not.
To touch on one last issue, the interface of the Google Music app for Android is improved with Android 4.0, but it’s still quite unpolished when compared to the included music players in Windows Phone and iPhone.
Why not charge?
As someone hunting for a cloud music solution, I’d almost prefer that Google offer a paid option for Google Music, which would give me full access to all of my tracks and the freedom to download them where I please, with the option to specify how the files are formatted and such. But for now, I sit and wait.
Of course there are teething troubles and hitches. BUT it’s FREE. Google is allowing you to store up to 20,000 bits of music for FREE, and now because the download option doesn’t work perfect or as you want it you’re complaining. I have some 8,000 tracks stored in Google Music which takes up nearly 50 Gb on a separate hard-drive. Thus Google are effectively giving you more than 100 Gb of space for Free. Yes of course its slow zipping those files into the cloud, it took me over 12 days to upload some 7,000 tracks on a 1 Mb connection while in China. It’s a lot quicker on my 10 Mb connection now I’m back in the free west, but hey, again I iterate it is a free service. Want something better, then pay for it, I’m sure their are premium cloud music services out there. As with anything it’s best to back up everything. Don’t rely just on cloud storage. Burn to disc, copy to a separate HD and store in the cloud if it’s important to you. For many people Google Music is fantastic. I create playlists while at my PC which are soon seen on the mobile device and able to be played anywhere should I so wish. I can walk around the house with my mobile connected to the WiFi and listen to anything in my entire music collection, searched easily and can even plug the phone into the HiFi should I wish. No more hunting for CDs or swapping them around to create a mood. Just select Genres, whether Jazz or Rock, Classical or Pop, if you’ve been as fastidious enough to categorise your music. As regards the restriction on downloading it could be an oversight on Google’s part, though they may also wish to discourage overuse of bandwidth.
I hear this argument a lot and I agree, to a degree, but a free service is just as useless as a paid service if it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. I’d love it if Google would offer a version of Google Music with a pricetag if it meant more freedom and options. I like Google Music, but I didn’t choose the price, Google did. That doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to point out ways it could be better.
really it is very hehpfull to all…For similar types of problem, I use a secret free download manager
rather than idm for smooth and fast consistent download
Oh yeah? And you’re happy with the download manager. I haven’t been so lucky. Any chance you’d let me know which one? :)
I still have not found a better music solution than CDs.
I am using this service on my new Galaxy Nexus. I have about 8K song and have been uploading them over the last few days. We’re stuck at around 3K songs. Using the Music Manager app on my Mac, importing my iTunes library, it is a stop and go process. If you leave your Mac on it’s login page (allowing multi login) the Music importing process hangs up. Then only way to get it up and running again is to quit the app, then restart it. If you are working via VPN, logging on and off the VPN also kills the upload process. They’ve obviously overlooked various environment issues when a person is uploading music.
As to the pinning process for keeping music local to your device, this is one of the most horrendous User eXperiences I have had the displeasure of using. You can only add music to your device via the Artist, Album or Playlist screens. So for instance if you are streaming a song and want to pin that to your device, you are unable to do so from the Currently Playing screen. Rather you must find the current song via the 3 aforementioned menus. It’s a terrible UX.
All in all, so far I am not impressed with Google Play for music. If once my music is uploaded and I continue to deal with UX headaches, I will just find another cloud service to work with.
While google provides this service at relatively little cost, keep in mind it is NOT free. After most users have purchased their Android device (which is a conscious decision to partake in the Android/Google ecosystem) they have shelled out several hundred dollars. That’s not including carrier fees (of which I’d bet Google gets a take of) and Play purchases. So make no mistake this is NOT a free service.
You might have some valid points about limitations. However, I’ve been using Google Music for several months, and “hands down” it’s the best solution in the marketplace today for uploading and listening to music via numerous devices. It’s free. I can upload a crap load of music (I’ve been storing on an external hardrive – 20,000 tracks.
Right, and hope I can pay Google soon enough to upload more into my G cloud. The current sytem lets me listen to all my music at work, at home or on my mobile device (driving / on the go) – for free. You should stop crying about having the best music service online for free… Seriously. I’m shocked Google even let’s you download it once vs. 3 times.
The music manager is pretty damn good as far as I’ve experienced. I point it at my iTunes folder, and other music folders I have as backup.. Works great. I uploaded by best 15,000 songs in like 3-4 days. Again. For free. FREE. And, it’s accessible from ANY Browser. I’m rocking to Google Music as I type, and it rocks. Listened all day from my car via the cloud. Perfect. Downloaded a great Bob Marley track too, now that they have the new Marketplace integrated into the Google Marketplace and Music App. Money..
I too could give Google 100 suggestions and bitch, but I’ll just thank them instead.
Overall I like the Google music service and have enjoyed the download recent purchase feature. I have to agree with the article that this new feature to download the whole library seems to be a waste. What I really want is the ability to browse my library and select specific albums to download to my computer. Is the only reason this is not possible is due to the music industry restrictions or is Google missing what the user wants?
I didn’t know the service had so many problems.I wished it was avalaible in Europe,but now…
I would just like to be able to download MY music from Google Music to MY phone. I know I can download music to my computer and then upload to my phone via USB, but why not let “pinned” music be ON the phone?
Otherwise, I love this app and have been using it since it came out. And I love having all that music at any computer, my cell, anywhere I want. I have to say I love it despite the limitations.
~ K ~