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Take that iTunes Match — you’ve been equalled, if not bettered in the UK, as Google’s finally launched its free streaming music service in Britain for us all to use and abuse. It’ll match your music tracks, and upload the ones it can’t, letting you stream them in-browser or to any Android device with a connection. Finally, Google Music’s actually useful in the UK.
Considering Apple charges £22 a year for basically the same thing, Google’s ‘Scan and Match’ service looks like an awesome bargain. 20,000 tracks can be shoved into your cloud library, which covers pretty much everyone but the biggest of music collectors.
You can now buy music from Google too, starting at 79p, if that’s your thing, but free your-music-in-the-cloud from Google is too tempting to pass up, even if you’re not tied into Google’s ecosystem already. [Google Music]
Thanks Andrew!
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But it doesn’t have a match system up an running, so although it’s free, it’s going to take a pretty long time to upload all my music on a puny 0.5Mb connection.
Until it can match music, iTunes is still leading.
Just checked my status – uploaded 314 songs since 9.00am this morning. iTunes match does a 25,000 library in about half an hour.
You should have been around at midnight when it went live, it was a lot quieter then. Also I am hearing conflicting stories about the match some say it is happening others not. Personally I’ve had it since it launched in the US so my stuff was up there ages ago.
It doesn’t even try to match for me. I open us the music manager, sign in, asks me to add a folder (in my case D:/) and just starts uploading them all. Not even a mention about matching the tracks.
Just because it doesn’t mention it, doesn’t mean it isn’t doing it. Do you have a lot of unusual music? Does it have all the tags correct? If you look at the music manager and the songs it is uploading slowly are mainstream stuff then yes, there may be a problem.
Currently uploaded:
Abba – Greatest Hits
AC/DC – Back In Black
Adele – 21
Aerosmith – Big Ones
– Permenent Vacation
Alanis Morisette – Jagged Little Pill
Amy Winehouse – Back To Black
Athlete – Vehicles & Animals
BB King – Riding With The King
Billy Joel – Ultimate
Amongst others. Not exactly the most unusual of tracks. Just want to make sure I am not doing something wrong more than anything.
Can’t explain it. I shall open the floor for others.
It’s meant to scan and match your library, just like iTunes Match does.
But it doesn’t.
any idea how i stop mine from being the american one? not matter what i try i get american dollars
No idea, mine’s fines.
hmm it actually seems to have sorted itself out since i posted that yesterday, although no match option that i can see
Ya, i would gladly switch to Google Music. After 3hrs of uploading. I gave up and went back to Match.
Here’s hoping for a native iOS app
Just wish I got a Nexus 4, then I would be using this.
Ally posted this on G+ “just phoned google and asked when it would be back in stock, they said sometime in the next couple of hours. Dubious.”
not sure how correct they are
Ahhh. here’s hoping.
And again no love for the Netherlands.
C’mon Google, give me Music, Books and g*ddamn Nexus devices!!
Works well with the gmusic app on the iphone
It’s on like Donkey Kong.
I’ve been uploading my 140GB music collection for the last two weeks (since it was announced as coming to the UK) at 2Mbps and expect it to take the rest of this week at least. I haven’t seen any matching going on at all. It is mostly obscure music but it’s interspersed with stuff that is mainstream – no matching done there afaik. The one thing that I’m happy about is that the Play Music app now supports gapless playback – 90% of my music is DJ sets or mix albums so I’m happy with that. For podcasts that are 2 hours long, if they’re encoded at 320kbps (as a lot of mine are) they won’t upload as they’re “too big” as tracks. Encoded at =<224kbps though they're fine.
If you’ve been uploading for 2 weeks you wouldn’t have noticed any matching until today. If the majority of your stuff is DJ sets it won’t match the individual songs out of those sets as the metadata won’t match.
Sorry Darrell, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m stupid. I realise that it won’t have been matching until today (assuming it’s turned on at Google that is) but I am still uploading (even now) and there’s the occasional Michael Jackson or some other “pop” song or ripped CD (I assume Guns ‘n Roses counts?) that isn’t being matched…I understand that my DJ sets and early 90s house music aren’t likely to be matched.
Ok, didn’t assume you were stupid, but did spell it out in case you were as I have said elsewhere I’ve had a Google Music account since it launched in the US and uploaded all my music long ago, so I have no personal experience can share regarding this matching.
I don’t know how long it’s been available, but I’ve only just noticed that you can buy movies to own via google Play now in the UK. Has anyone else noticed this, or can tell me how long that’s been available?
I only noticed yesterday. And when I got my Nexus 7 last week it was definitely rent only. So I’m guessing it happened over the last few days.
took my mate about 2 weeks to upload all his music, (he done the proxy method to get it installed early) makes good use of google music.
Probably says more about my collection, but my music uploaded overnight. 8,277 songs.
Then again, I’m on Virgin’s 50mbit so that might explain it.
Doesn’t appear to be matching my collection either, very weird. It scans my iTunes folder and finds 14,000 odd tracks, but only 80 are uploaded
Just seems to be uploading all of my music…not matching
Wow, they even have an Unbuntu/Fedora programme unlike Amazon’s similar service. Nice one Google!
My is doing about 1,000 songs every 2 hours – quite content with that. So far, so good. At last, some joy for the UK.
This is EXCELLENT. Finally my Nexus 7′s 8GB storage seems ample… to celebrate I may even invest in Netflix… what do people think?
Kat if your watching, could Giz do a guide on how to use a Nexus 7 and also what to download… cheers
Also wanna say, this totally kicks Spotify in the balls no? YAY YAY YAYA
I have spotify premium , and about 12,000 local tracks on my HDD. IS this better?