Tristan Phillips's Blog

Although I’m based in the UK I have managed to signup to Google’s Music service and try out some of its features.

I have been EAGERLY awaiting a place in the cloud large enough to hold my circa 100gb collection for some time, so was very excited to get the chance to try it out.

Google music gives you the ability to upload 20,000 of your songs, and play them from the cloud on any of your devices.  Its is not designed to allow you to download the music onto other devices, rather stream it.

There is a native app for Android, and a web app for iOS devices to allow you to play your music.

Unlike the forthcoming iTunes Match service, you have to actually upload the music to the cloud, there is no matching facility.  However the service is free, so I guess you cannot grumble too much about that.

Is it any good though?  

Well, sadly, at the moment no it is not.  I have been signed up for 3 days now and have managed to upload a total of 412 tracks to the cloud.  I have a 100mb connection at the office.  The service seems to be incredibly flaky.  With no explanation as to why my uploads have stalled, and no evident way of resuming them, I’m left with no choice but to un uninstall the software, delete the music from the cloud and call it a day.  Reading some forums it would seem that upload stalling is a common issue at the moment.  So I doubt it’s due to my UK location.

We are still waiting for iTunes match in the UK, but with Apple’s track record of things “Just working” my guess its well worth the subscription fees and the wait to get our hands on it.  I do think the Google service issues will be ironed out, but it will be too little too late to save my interest.