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Google Music Annoyances

S

SnadBoy

Lurker
I was excited to finally get my invite to Google Music ... but after playing with it for a few days the bloom is off the rose.
1) I cannot find any way to give the thumbs up/down from the Android app
2) I cannot find a playlist on the Android app that shows only the songs I marked thumbs up on the web interface
3) If you mark songs in the Android app to be available offline they appear to be stored in the phone's memory, not the SD card. Is there a way to change this?
4) I cannot find any way to exclude other audio on the SD card from being listed ... I don't want my podcasts cluttering up my list of songs.
5) I cannot find a list of all the music I have marked to be available offline

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to like, but, the rough edges are making mSpot look better and better.

SnadBoy

Update - 9 June 2011
6) The android app will allow the same song to repeatedly by added to a playlist without any warning or request for confirmation.
 
Welcome to the Android forums, SnadBoy. One thing to keep in mind is that google music is in beta, so there's most likely going to be an occasional bug that needs fixed, and improvements that are missing. I don't really know an answer for you regarding your questions, but you do raise some good points.

One thing you can do to help improve it is send google feedback on problems you're having with it, and ways they can improve it. Doing this for beta products is very important to getting a good finished product :)

http://www.google.com/support/music/bin/request.py?contact_type=feedback
 
3) It actually is stored on your sd card. It's stored in android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music/

I agree about the annoyances you have. Here's some of the things they need to change imo.

1) Same album name by different bands, show up in the same album on the phone and in searches on the web. You can't download one album or the other, you download BOTH and they get grouped together. Bad.
2) No linux upload support! What!?
3) Save location/naming. You should be able to select where you want the music to be saved. Also saving it by Artist/album/songname is how i'd like to do it.
4) You can't make individual songs available for download.
5) No lyric viewer.
6) No sync music option in the app.
7) When songs fail to upload, it doesn't tell why.
8) Hold down volume up/down to change songs. OR double click trackball.

There's probably a few more, but I can't think of them right now.
 
MJM128 said:
3) It actually is stored on your sd card. It's stored in android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music/

I agree about the annoyances you have. Here's some of the things they need to change imo.

1) Same album name by different bands, show up in the same album on the phone and in searches on the web. You can't download one album or the other, you download BOTH and they get grouped together. Bad.
2) No linux upload support! What!?
3) Save location/naming. You should be able to select where you want the music to be saved. Also saving it by Artist/album/songname is how i'd like to do it.
4) You can't make individual songs available for download.
5) No lyric viewer.
6) No sync music option in the app.
7) When songs fail to upload, it doesn't tell why.
8) Hold down volume up/down to change songs. OR double click trackball.

There's probably a few more, but I can't think of them right now.
Click to expand...

What is the sense of having your music stored in the Google "cloud" online if you make music available offline is still takes up space on the SD card. I thought one of the advantages of the cloud was to free up space on the phone or SD card?
 
justboy said:
Is there a way to stop the track once it's been started? I have not figured that basic piece out yet.
Click to expand...

No, I think you just "pause" it and that's that.

One of my main annoyances with Google Music is, for some unknown reason, the first track I play on my phone is always downloaded as super low bit rate, mono quality. Something like 64kbps mono.

I got around this by turning off caching of music entirely and then I just skip tracks ahead and then back. It will sometimes re-download the higher quality version of the song. If I leave caching on, that one back track will ALWAYS be bad (it never re-downloads the higher quality track.)
 
Here is my chief annoyance:

Shuffle stinks on both the android app and the desktop app.
On the android, I play my local songs (don't stream because of data concerns) and I stream online from my cloud.

In both cases, several times i have heard the same song at least three times in a 2 hour period, when I have 4-5 hours worth on phone and 9-10 hours in cloud. It also seems to favor newer items, although not always.
 
KenG10 said:
No, I think you just "pause" it and that's that.

One of my main annoyances with Google Music is, for some unknown reason, the first track I play on my phone is always downloaded as super low bit rate, mono quality. Something like 64kbps mono.

I got around this by turning off caching of music entirely and then I just skip tracks ahead and then back. It will sometimes re-download the higher quality version of the song. If I leave caching on, that one back track will ALWAYS be bad (it never re-downloads the higher quality track.)
Click to expand...

does that mean by pausing a track even more batt life will be sucked from our batts..
 
MJM128 said:
1) Same album name by different bands, show up in the same album on the phone and in searches on the web. You can't download one album or the other, you download BOTH and they get grouped together. Bad.
Click to expand...

I was having that problem as well but found that if I filled in both "Artist" and "Album Artist", that helped separate the Greatest Hits and other repeat named albums.

I was also getting single albums being split up into two different ones with the same name and found that the problem was generally that some songs had "Album Artist" info and some didn't and they got segregated because of that.

Oh, and I definitely like the service but I agree with pretty much all of the gripes pointed out in this thread.
 
MJM128 said:
3) It actually is stored on your sd card. It's stored in android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music/

I agree about the annoyances you have. Here's some of the things they need to change imo.

1) Same album name by different bands, show up in the same album on the phone and in searches on the web. You can't download one album or the other, you download BOTH and they get grouped together. Bad.
2) No linux upload support! What!?
3) Save location/naming. You should be able to select where you want the music to be saved. Also saving it by Artist/album/songname is how i'd like to do it.
4) You can't make individual songs available for download.
5) No lyric viewer.
6) No sync music option in the app.
7) When songs fail to upload, it doesn't tell why.
8) Hold down volume up/down to change songs. OR double click trackball.

There's probably a few more, but I can't think of them right now.
Click to expand...


Please send your list to them at

Contact Us - Music Help

As a developer they are also keeping all that music and playlist data away from other apps and their users. It's a weak form of "DRM" -- hiding the data to prevent copying. And it's not their data to hide -- it goes against everything Android and everything Google has stated as policy.

More info here:
the Data Liberation Front (This is a Google website)
 
Invite anyone....I've definitely been anticipating joining. I'm already a G+ wizard. Please if there is a spare invite

Thanks guys.
 
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