a rant about everything wrong with google play music

[rgaiken]

Hey all

So I just wanted to post this rant to see if anyone else has as many issues with Google Play Music as I do. Its basic premise is pretty sweet, but its execution is a bit lacking.

A) Force closure. Professionally-developed apps should never do this, yet in GPM, all you have to do is click on a playlist before it decides you have waited long enough at that screen.
FIX: None yet (except being patient and waiting for the names to populate)

B) Stacking with Play Store. If you start playing some music press home, then browse around in the PS, you will have to navigate backwards through every page you looked at. Clicking the GPM icon on the home screen just opens wherever you were in the store.
FIX: (partial) Use the back button in the top-left of the store to return to the top level quickly

C) Garbling music. If the internet connection drops out momentarily (e.g. switching to/from wifi/3g), GPM vomits, and douses your eardrums with afore-mentioned vomit (random sounds, random sections of the song, playing past the end of the song)
EDIT: Once it streams it once that way, it's basically stuck in its garbled form unless:
FIX: (workaround) Set the song to be available offline. Next time your phone is in sync mode, and on wifi, if you have that setting set, it will download the song correctly in its entirety.

D) No cache management. My SD card has filled up several times because GPM went ahead and used up half of a 4GB card, right down to the last byte. Yet, I don't want to turn cacheing off, because:
FIX: (None yet)

E) 3G can't stream as fast as GPM desires. Turning off 'only stream high quality' helped slightly, but it still takes about half as much time to play the song as it does to buffer it.
FIX: (Workaround) Make the music you want to listen to available offline, or set it to play each song (silently, if you don't want to listen to it) while you are connected to wifi

F) Loading times. It takes around a minute after opening the app before it will get around to actually populating the list of artists.
FIX: (possibly) Re-install the app. It will need to re-sync everything, but this may help that.

I've always thought that smartphone devs should make their apps the shining standard for all app devs to judge their apps against, yet it seems that google's is a bit tarnished and pockmarked.

Perhaps they should've rebranded it to Google Music, Millenium Edition instead...

/rant

 

[thedrizl]

Sorry to hear you have had so many issues. I've been using Google Music since getting in on the beta last summer and absolutely love it. The only time I've ever had an issue with streaming is when I've been in an area with poor signal (i.e. 1X). Other than that I've had no issues with the service. What device are you using primarily for streaming?

 

[rgaiken]

I have an LG axis. It doesn't exactly have a ton of horsepower at its disposal, which may be part of the problem. Even when I have full bars in 3G mode, it still can't keep up with the music. My provider is Cellcom, which is one of those regional carriers

 

[OfTheDamned]

I can understand your frustrations. I use Google Music for just about all my music playback and would be incredibly frustrated if it was giving me trouble.

A) Force closure. Professionally-developed apps should never do this, yet in GPM, all you have to do is click on a playlist before it decides you have waited long enough at that screen.

This is one I have not experienced.

B) Stacking with Play Store. If you start playing some music press home, then browse around in the PS, you will have to navigate backwards through every page you looked at. Clicking the GPM icon on the home screen just opens wherever you were in the store.

There is a link at the bottom of the app that takes you to the store. Since they are connected the way they are just trying to close the music store doesn't really work. Therefore any activity you do in the store works much like using a web browser. If you want to make quick jumps backward however, simply use the back button at the top left of the play store. This should make moving backwards to Music easier and faster.

C) Garbling music. If the internet connection drops out momentarily (e.g. switching to/from wifi/3g), GPM vomits, and douses your eardrums with afore-mentioned vomit (random sounds, random sections of the song, playing past the end of the song)

This is a connection issue and not really an issue of music most of the time. The only other time I have had garbled music has been when a song did not upload properly to Google Music.

D) No cache management. My SD card has filled up several times because GPM went ahead and used up half of a 4GB card, right down to the last byte. Yet, I don't want to turn cacheing off, because:

I agree that it would be nice for the app to auto clear things out or a time limit to be set on how long things stay stored and that may come someday. I can easily see someone making the opposite complaint about Google deleting all the songs that they wanted to keep on their SD card.

E) 3G can't stream as fast as GPM desires. Turning off 'only stream high quality' helped slightly, but it still takes about half as much time to play the song as it does to buffer it.

This is a bandwidth limitation. If you connect to Wifi or 4G you will see that it never happens.

F) Loading times. It takes around a minute after opening the app before it will get around to actually populating the list of artists.

This is another bandwidth limitation. It requires bandwidth to load all of that information to the phone.

I've always thought that smartphone devs should make their apps the shining standard for all app devs to judge their apps against, yet it seems that google's is a bit tarnished and pockmarked.

Perhaps they should've rebranded it to Google Music, Millenium Edition instead...

/rant

In the end, you may want to try one of the different music streaming services and/or apps on the market. Perhaps one of them will work out better for you.

 

[OstrichSaK]

Some of the things you describe I haven't experienced on several phones. May be worth uninstalling and installing again to see if it helps.

My single largest complaint is that there's absolutely NO way to see the full title of a song with a rather long name. There is no 'see details' option or a scrolling feature or a way to turn the phone sideways or... anything. This is annoying if you want to listen to Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall (part 1)' then part 2 and then part 3. I'm sure there are other examples but I just had this happen this past weekend when we were driving out of state and I was quite frustrated that I couldn't see the full name to know which one was which one to play them in order. There should be a way to do this as this is not even a feature but something that should be considered basic requirement.

 

[rgaiken]

Thanks for the well-thought-out reply.

There is a link at the bottom of the app that takes you to the store. Since they are connected the way they are just trying to close the music store doesn't really work. Therefore any activity you do in the store works much like using a web browser. If you want to make quick jumps backward however, simply use the back button at the top left of the play store. This should make moving backwards to Music easier and faster.

I never noticed that back button before. Thanks for that tip

This is a bandwidth limitation. If you connect to Wifi or 4G you will see that it never happens.

Yeah, I realize that on this side Google's limited by how much they can compress a song before it becomes really noticeable, but I do think that their stream should have an option for strongly preferring playback smoothness over sound quality.

This is another bandwidth limitation. It requires bandwidth to load all of that information to the phone.

I'm not talking about the initial sync, that obviously takes a while. I'm talking about whenever you start the app after it hasn't been running (e.g. force closed app or rebooted phone). The 3G status up top never shows any upload or download activity.

May be worth uninstalling and installing again to see if it helps.

It did help slightly, now instead of taking around a minute on a cold start, it takes about half that. Thanks for making it slightly more bearable

In the end, you may want to try one of the different music streaming services and/or apps on the market. Perhaps one of them will work out better for you.

In all, I like most of the features that the app has, and part of the reason I posted this rant here was to try to get rid of at least some of these annoying glitches.

I'll make some edits to the main post to make it easier for anyone who happens to get here via the google to mitigate some of the problems.

 

[OstrichSaK]

Some of the things you describe I haven't experienced on several phones. May be worth uninstalling and installing again to see if it helps.

My single largest complaint is that there's absolutely NO way to see the full title of a song with a rather long name. There is no 'see details' option or a scrolling feature or a way to turn the phone sideways or... anything. This is annoying if you want to listen to Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall (part 1)' then part 2 and then part 3. I'm sure there are other examples but I just had this happen this past weekend when we were driving out of state and I was quite frustrated that I couldn't see the full name to know which one was which one to play them in order. There should be a way to do this as this is not even a feature but something that should be considered basic requirement.

Some of the things you describe I haven't experienced on several phones.

Really?

 

[thedrizl]

It sounds like the main problem the OP is experiencing is comong from the hardware, not the app itself. I've used GPM on three different devices now (Droid X, Droid Razr, Galaxy Tab) and have not experienced any of these problems. My advice would be to find someone with a better device, and see if they have run into any of these issues as well.

 

[rmadler]

I use Google Music on my Galaxy Nexus and it is really good. I hated it on my Original Droid. Your issues are all due to your harware, operating system and bandwith limitations. Get a 4G phone with ICS and see how it flys.

 

[rgaiken]

I use Google Music on my Galaxy Nexus and it is really good. I hated it on my Original Droid. Your issues are all due to your harware, operating system and bandwith limitations. Get a 4G phone with ICS and see how it flys.

Yeah, that isn't going to happen for well over a year, due to the fact that I'm on a contract until June 2013, and my carrier doesn't have 4G yet. The Axis is also one of the few phones Cellcom offered that actually had a slide-out keyboard. The only way that'd happen sooner is if my phone goes the way of every single mp3 player (except one, that one just stopped turning on one day) that I've owned in the past has gone: broken screen.

@thedrizl good idea, I'll have to give that a shot when my brother gets around to uploading his collection.

 

[thedrizl]

4G is not so much of an issue, believe it or not. I'm still on 3G here in VA on Verizon, and I used Google Music just about every day. Then again, your provider may be manipulating your data reception, too.

You can always try to acquire a better device on your own through sources like Craigslist, eBay, or right here on these forums in the classifieds. That's what I had to do about a year ago to get away from the LG Ally. Not a bad phone, per se, just way too underpowered for what I wanted from it.

 

[lgs0304]

I have yet another issue with Google Play Music. I downloaded my music from itunes. Some songs came over. Some seem to be in a holding area. If I click on a playlist, it shows some songs and then says 46 Songs To Be Added Soon. Where are these songs and how to I get them added?