Beck Diefenbach/ReutersGoogle’s Music: Beta service stores your music library in the cloud.Wednesday, Google announced Music: Beta, a new cloud-based music service that will be available over the Web and on Android devices (initial users will be by invitation only, which you can request by going to the Music: Beta Web page). As was reported Wednesday, your music will be stored online, for instant retrieval from any Web-enabled or Android device you have.
So what does this mean to you? Well, let’s start with a few assumptions. First, that you have music on your PC, and second, that your music is managed by iTunes. This has worked well for many people for many years, but iTunes does have some limitations, which Music: Beta (and, earlier, Amazon’s Cloud Drive) is directly addressing.
One of the limitations of iTunes is that your music can’t move around very easily. If you add something to your iTunes library on your PC, it can only get to, say, your iPhone by syncing the two devices via a cable. On the flip side, if you buy a song on your iPhone, it doesn’t get onto your PC (and, therefore, whatever other devices you are syncing to it, like another phone or a tablet) until you do that same hard-wired sync.
Oh, and if you have been using iTunes and have an Android smartphone or tablet, you’ve always had to rely on third-party apps like DoubleTwist to get your music onto Android devices, so Google’s move here, among other things, provides built-in music-management where previously there hadn’t really been any.
But Music: Beta’s main selling point is that it copies your music collection to Google’s remote servers. Once your music is on Google’s servers, it’s available to any Internet-connected device that can access it, from other PCs to Android smartphones.
Real-world example: Right now, as I type this, I cannot listen to the iTunes library that I have on my home PC. I have iTunes on this computer here at work, and I have an Internet connection, but it can’t connect to my music at home. Music: Beta solves this problem. All I do is access my music that’s now stored in the cloud and I can enjoy all my music right here at my desk.
Well, almost all my music. There is a catch: If you bought songs and albums on the iTunes Music Store before January 6, 2009, those tracks are copy-protected, and won’t be uploaded to Google’s servers (Apple removed copy protection on all music for sale after that date). If you’ve bought music from other vendors, like Amazon’s Music Store, you’re in luck, since all those songs have been sold without copy protection.
Now you can, in fact, remove copy protection from pre-2009 iTunes music. There are two ways—the hard way and the expensive way (neither of those sound attractive, do they?). The hard way is to make CDs of all your copy-protected music and then re-import them into iTunes. Doing so will take off the copy protection.
The expensive way is to pay Apple to remove the copy protection on each protected file. That will cost you 30 cents per song, 60 cents per album and 30 percent the cost of a music album. That can add up.
Music: Beta does more than just allow PCs to play music from home. It is also available as an Android app, so smartphones and tablets that run the operating system will have direct access to the same library. Add a song or make a playlist on one device and all of them have it, instantly.
Now Google does not sell music. When you want something new to listen to, you’ll do what you’ve usually done: buy tracks on iTunes Music Store or Amazon or another vendor. But then Music: Beta will automatically upload those songs to the cloud, keeping your online library of music up-to-date.
What you can’t do is take that online library and redownload it to another device (this is something you actually can do with Amazon’s Cloud Drive service). What happens in the cloud, stays in the cloud. But Music: Beta will let you keep some of your music on your device locally, so that you can listen to it when you don’t have an Internet connection.
If you’re an Android user, this is a pretty big deal, assuming Google can get the service to work cleanly and easily. The search giant hasn’t always had immediate success with consumer products and services, but there has been a steady drumbeat of migrating personal media collections to the cloud, for easy and universal playback, and clearly Google is looking to get ahead of that curve.
Another knock-on effect of today’s Google announcement? What it does, if anything, to Apple. The company’s been rumored to be working on a cloud-based version of iTunes, and if there are now options from both Google and Amazon, Cupertino may not be far behind.
Or not. As with all things Apple, I’ve learned to stop guessing.
P.S. I’ll have a closer, hands-on look at Music: Beta soon and will post my findings then. Stay tuned.
