Google Music Beta

Got my invite to Google Music the other day and loaded it up on my Mac Book Pro. Google Music is essentially a music locker service that gives you access to your music on the web and Android mobile devices with an internet connection.

The sign up process is really simple. You login with your Google ID and walk through a few steps. In one of the steps  Google Music asks you about your music preferences. These selections are used to populate your account with free songs.

This last part is important because otherwise you'd start out with an empty locker and you'd have nothing to listen to. So I started playing the free music and downloaded the music manager application. By the way, the free music selection was good and I was happy to listen while I installed the application.

Web UI for Google Music Beta

The installation of the Google Music Manager took just a few seconds. It installs and runs with very little configuration. In my case, I told it all my music was in iTunes so it scanned iTunes and automatically started loading my library to the service. I opened the Music Manager preferences so that I could see if there were other options. Basically, you can choose when to upload and specify where to look for music. If you didn't have iTunes for example you specify a folder of music to upload. The Music Manager runs in the background and I can't think of any reason why you'd ever need to check it after the initial install.

I was sharing an internet connection with my daughter who was watching "My Little Pony" videos during my testing. I can say this, if you too are sharing your connection with someone watching "My Little Pony" don't expect speedy uploads. However, since the whole process runs in the background I see this as being an issue that only lasts until you get a significant portion of your library loaded.

Playback from the locker was awesome over the web. The interface is clean, easy to use, and powerful. Overall, it's very impressive. I could see myself preferring this interface over iTunes and moving music around from one machine to another. The only con I can think of with Google Music is the need to upload all your music which in my case will take weeks and for some reason I feel a little uneasy to let Google know about about my music choices.