So I'm uploading my music now and so far, this seems pretty freakin' cool. Free's up space on my phone, allows me to access my library anywhere, and autosyncs with my itunes. what are the cons from those out there that have used it?
You can have your music cached for offline use. It's a setting in the menu. You can also use an app like GMusic Sniper which will find the location of where your Google Music stored the offline cached music, and make it available to play in other music players such as Power Amp, etc. https://market.android.com/details?...wyLDEsImNvbS50M2hoNHh4MHIuZ211c2ljc25pcGVyIl0.
Wow, I just downloaded the app to take advantage of the sale they had on songs and albums. I like it so far... and yes, you can cache to play offline. I didn't know about the GMusic Sniper program, and since I also just downloaded a trial of Player Pro I will check into how they integrate (thanks for the pointer). One thing I have noticed streaming music from the cloud is that it appears to really chew up the battery. I don't know if it is worse on battery life than playing music locally though.
Yeah, it's definitely because of all the data transfer occurring. I just cache mine to avoid all of that all together. Especially since I use LTE lol.
I was just doing some research on iCloud vs. Google Music vs. Amazon Could vs. other random online storage. For personal use, we use Apple products. We're not huge music people, but have our fair share of music, but are equally (more?) concerned about photos and videos, which I want to be able to store on the cloud forever (I do a horrible job of backing our stuff up). Would love opinions about which service to use. At the end of the day, my guess is iCloud will be easiest for us, as I want something that is simple and intuitive, and it fits with what we have already. I'm just a little put off that it is so Apple specific - ie. you never know, we could get tired of Apple in 5 years - and that you may have to do things like their Music Match, etc. that just keeps adding costs. Also, Apple probably isn't going to be the cheapest option ever.
Just use iCloud for backing up photos/videos. You can use Google Music to stream your content to your iPhone. There is no official app, but it certainly works as an HTML5 web app. However, there is an unofficial app that appears to work great, it's not free. http://lifehacker.com/5851241/gmusic-is-a-native-google-music-player-for-the-iphone
I haven't used it yet, but from what I understand Google Music doesn't "convert" the music to the highest quality versions (that probably needs clarification), and the music library (for new purchases) is far behind iTunes.
if you are mac-based why give it a second thought? it's not like your music files are erased from your hard disk once you match to the cloud.