Hello all,
just wanted to talk about a tool I use very often that works quite well on desktop. It's called Google Play Music (Those who have Android smart phones may be familiar with this app), and it is basically a music player for your desktop that automatically can upload your music based on file location. It's also very clean and neat looking so if you use the app version on your phone, you'll notice how easy it is to use and how some of the features actually make sense.
So, right here you can see the first page of GPM when you log in to your google account. You can get here by going to play.google.com/music This is called "listen now", a feature that essentially takes your recent listens or puts together instant mixes, or a collaboration of songs you might want to listen to in a playlist based off of previous listens.
The side bar on the left shows a variety of selections:
Here we have listen now as shown earlier, My library that shows, of course, everything you've uploaded, along with instant mixes and the shop. Google has basically created their own version of iTunes, and it's library is already pretty large and is always expanding. There's usually a lot of good deals on there as well because they are always offering free tracks, even half off entire albums.
Next, we see another selection familiar from iTunes like Last Added and purchased. You'll also notice the "shared with me" button which is a pretty cool feature because it takes songs that have been shared to you on Google+ and syncs it automatically so you have them in your library. You can also create your own playlists as shown in the last column.
One thing I also like and find useful on the app version for smart devices is that you can choose what to store on your device, and what you want to stream in order to save storage space, although streaming does use data, of course. As you can see, in the top left next to the headphones, you can see underneath My Library "All music". You can click this, and select if you either want it to be showing everything, downloaded or not, in your library. You can also just show downloaded music.
Another thing you may notice in the interface is the colons next to each artist. Clicking this you'll be able to access a few options, one of which is a little pin icon where you can "pin" selected music (download) to your devices storage. Fortunately enough, if you have thousands upon thousands of songs on your computer Google allows you to upload up to 20,000 songs for free without having to pay for more cloud space. Nevertheless, that's a lot of music.
Google is also taking a shot at radio with All Access. This allows you, with a subscription, to listen to millions of songs with unlimited radio. This is to compete with services such as Pandora and iTunes Radio, but it honestly works just the same as the rest of the services. It's $9.99, so it might not be exactly worth it since other services are free, including iTunes radio, although the first month does come free.
Although I don't use the All Access myself, I love everything else about GPM because of how easy it is to upload your music since it takes everything new added to a specific folder on your computer and automatically uploads to your library, it has great deals with a large library, and ultimately, it works well at looks really nice. I also love the fact that even if you have your entire music library from your computer stored in the cloud, you can listen to it at any time without risking any valuable space on your device. I encourage you guys to give it a try for yourself, it's best on Android because it allows you to actually download the music if you choose to. It's on iOS as well and the layout is just as smooth and nice, and all the features including All Access are there.
EDUCATIONAL VALUE:
Google Play Music also has some educational value to it due to its podcast support. It's limited right now, but it has categories from religious, to tech podcasts for anyone with interest.
just wanted to talk about a tool I use very often that works quite well on desktop. It's called Google Play Music (Those who have Android smart phones may be familiar with this app), and it is basically a music player for your desktop that automatically can upload your music based on file location. It's also very clean and neat looking so if you use the app version on your phone, you'll notice how easy it is to use and how some of the features actually make sense.
So, right here you can see the first page of GPM when you log in to your google account. You can get here by going to play.google.com/music This is called "listen now", a feature that essentially takes your recent listens or puts together instant mixes, or a collaboration of songs you might want to listen to in a playlist based off of previous listens.
The side bar on the left shows a variety of selections:
Here we have listen now as shown earlier, My library that shows, of course, everything you've uploaded, along with instant mixes and the shop. Google has basically created their own version of iTunes, and it's library is already pretty large and is always expanding. There's usually a lot of good deals on there as well because they are always offering free tracks, even half off entire albums.
Next, we see another selection familiar from iTunes like Last Added and purchased. You'll also notice the "shared with me" button which is a pretty cool feature because it takes songs that have been shared to you on Google+ and syncs it automatically so you have them in your library. You can also create your own playlists as shown in the last column.
One thing I also like and find useful on the app version for smart devices is that you can choose what to store on your device, and what you want to stream in order to save storage space, although streaming does use data, of course. As you can see, in the top left next to the headphones, you can see underneath My Library "All music". You can click this, and select if you either want it to be showing everything, downloaded or not, in your library. You can also just show downloaded music.
Another thing you may notice in the interface is the colons next to each artist. Clicking this you'll be able to access a few options, one of which is a little pin icon where you can "pin" selected music (download) to your devices storage. Fortunately enough, if you have thousands upon thousands of songs on your computer Google allows you to upload up to 20,000 songs for free without having to pay for more cloud space. Nevertheless, that's a lot of music.
Google is also taking a shot at radio with All Access. This allows you, with a subscription, to listen to millions of songs with unlimited radio. This is to compete with services such as Pandora and iTunes Radio, but it honestly works just the same as the rest of the services. It's $9.99, so it might not be exactly worth it since other services are free, including iTunes radio, although the first month does come free.
Although I don't use the All Access myself, I love everything else about GPM because of how easy it is to upload your music since it takes everything new added to a specific folder on your computer and automatically uploads to your library, it has great deals with a large library, and ultimately, it works well at looks really nice. I also love the fact that even if you have your entire music library from your computer stored in the cloud, you can listen to it at any time without risking any valuable space on your device. I encourage you guys to give it a try for yourself, it's best on Android because it allows you to actually download the music if you choose to. It's on iOS as well and the layout is just as smooth and nice, and all the features including All Access are there.
EDUCATIONAL VALUE:
Google Play Music also has some educational value to it due to its podcast support. It's limited right now, but it has categories from religious, to tech podcasts for anyone with interest.
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