Hey All,
So I'm now just over a week into my free trial of Google Play Music and
over 43 GB+ deep into downloaded, offline tunes. As promised, I'm
following up with my impressions of their subscription service vs. Spotify
Premium, now that I've got some dirt under my nails, so to speak.
To start, overall I'd say I'm very satisfied with the switch. As others
had warned may be the case, I've found no issues in finding lesser known
music. While I will give as detailed of a pro's and con's list below as
possible, the short answer is I'm quite happy with Google Play Music, and
would recommend it over Spotify Premium until they dump the ridiculous
download restrictions.
PRO'S:
- 43+ GB of offline music on my device and counting. While I don't have an
exact song count, conservatively it's roughly 7,000+ songs, and could be
almost 11,000, depending on individual track quality. A word on that..
- Songs sound great! The offline music I've been listening to sounds just
as good as the Spotify "extreme" quality setting downloaded music.
Streaming music also is of a high audio caliber, when listening to it on my
high speed, home internet connection. There's actually little noticeable
difference between the hard copies and cloud based songs in that WiFi
location. Quality of streaming via cell is also very good, but that has
many factors that come to bear, based on your device, your carrier's
network capability and any data speed policies they may implement.
- The layout of the user interface (UI/GUI) is just fine, despite other's
previous gripes about it. I prefer the Spotify GUI for now, but Google has
proven to be a close second, closing in on equal (in terms of layout only-
pls see con's section). I think there may have been some app updates since
other users posted those unflattering remarks on the GUI. One big plus is
that with Spotify, despite having a very large screen on my Samsung Note
phone, much of the time, when trying to access the track menu, to add a
song to a queue or playlist for ex, I'd end up scrolling the list
inadvertently, as the position of the menu button would constantly interact
with the scroll feature (even while using my precision tip stylus)... This
is not an issue at all with the layout on Google, but was a source of
constant irritation on Spotify.
- Making playlists has been very easy, and they can be made pubic or
private upon creation. You may also add a description to the playlist
title, to help further describe its musical contents (good if you're like
me with many lists, or you plan on sharing it with the community).
- Your listening activities are private by default, so you do not need to
direct a "private session" like you might want to do on Spotify.
- Although I have what I'd deem fairly eclectic tastes(from lots of popular
stuff, to gospel, guerrilla house, and many global music varieties), I've
been able to find roughly 97% of the music collection I'd complied via
Spotify. If you're a big didgeridoo fan, or are heavy into auto-tuned
Danish hip hop, not sure if that statement will hold true for you, but for
all readily imaginable music genera, I've had virtually no issues in
grabbing the tracks I seek.
- Price is exactly equal to Spotify Premium subscription pricing, but for
$5 more (USD) I believe, you can get a family plan, allowing 5 users (I
think- it may be 4 + You = 5) in your family the same benefits of a single
premium member's subscription.
- With your Google Play Music subscription, you get a free YouTube Red
subscription (not a trial one, but rather a full subscription concurrent
with the play music one), allowing for ad free viewing of content on
YouTube, and also access to YouTube paid content. This is pretty cool I'm
finding- in terms of music alone, you can watch the song you're listening
to being performed if you wish.
- You can see and then edit any randomized song queue with a GUI button
push, which makes for a great listening experience, as you can take random
groupings of songs, then dump those you're not feeling at the moment. You
are also then easily able to make that edited queue into a playlist. If
listening to tunes in a playlist already, you're then able to tweak it as
you listen from the playing song screen... On Spotify, at least on my
phone, I had to navigate to a whole other menu tree to mess around with the
playlist I was enjoying.
- Most popular music songs come built in with a video accompaniment on the
GUI, via a YouTube-looking button push, allowing as I said, you to watch
the song being performed while you listen, or to view the official music
video (if that's your thing).
- While not as on point as Spotify, there are good recommendations for like
styled music being enjoyed or searched... I think this feature will
continue to improve with use, and as I continue to rate songs with the
"thumbs up" or down buttons on the playing song GUI.
- If you use Chrome as your internet browser, there's great integration
with your computer, and unlike Spotify, I've been able to have songs play
on my mobile device and desktop at the same time, without forced log outs
or migration from a master playback device (if listening on my phone, if I
wanted to listen to Spotify on my PC, I either had to kill my phone player,
or broadcast to my PC from my phone- a silly step in my opinion, and one
I've yet to encounter on Google Play Music).
- You can broadcast your playing songs to a multitude of other music/video
devices, much like Spotify offers.
- When you search, you get song, album, and artist results, but also video
results too... A feature I'm finding pretty cool, esp because you can view
the media via the native app, and not have to open another app to play it.
Also, because of the heavy voice integration by Google across most of their
mobile (Android OS) devices, with my phone, I can voice search my queries.
- For Android devices, I think the lock screen and notification panel
controls are much better, allowing for skip and pause, but also back
track. There's also no annoying "x" (close) button, which I'd constantly
hit by accident when trying to skip a song on the locked screen while
driving... Forcing me to unlock my phone to regain control of the playback.
- Being an Android phone owner, as well as a pretty wide user of Google
products, it seems that Play Music generally integrates better between my
phone and other life facets that include use of Google's offerings, than
Spotify ever did.
- You can upload up to 50,000 songs of your own onto the platform,
integrating those old, ripped CD's from yesteryear, or even iTunes
collections and other, legit mp3's into Google Play Music.
- Apparently NO download/offline music limit to speak of!! I was also told
this by a Google phone rep when considering switching to their service,
just to confirm it (goodbye 3,333 songs only!).
CON'S:
- The GUI, while designed fine for my needs in terms of layout, is slow to
respond to inputs for anything from skipping tracks, to rating a song, or
adding it to a playlist. I've tried improving response speeds by closing
all other open apps, but it had no noticeable difference on the slow GUI
response... This is with a premium, quad-core processor device.
- Downloading music takes longer. MUCH longer than Spotify. This could be
due to quality values set for the download, but if so, I've yet to find a
setting allowing for differing download qualities.
- Downloads are done on an entire album basis, and not offered by
individual song unless you purchase that single song (unless I'm missing
something major here). While I've been able to shed some unwanted music
from the whole album downloads where I only wanted a few tracks, I could
only do so after downloading the entire album, which both consumes time and
physical device memory. I suppose this has something to do with Google's
licencing agreements, and while it's a pain, because I've got an Android
phone with a large, expandable, micro SD memory card capacity, I think it's
a fair price to pay for unlimited offline listening- it is a pain however,
so on the con side.
- Streaming music over cellular data seems to be a bit bloated, eating more
data than Spotify streaming does, but this is a purely anecdotal
observation, and is not at all based on my actually comparing data use
between the two platforms while streaming like songs.
- It may seem topical, but on Android lollipop (v 5.1.1), you don't get
album art of the playing song on your locked screen like with Spotify, but
rather only on the opened app's GUI.
- While you may upload 50,000 songs of your own as I'd mentioned, this DOES
NOT include Spotify songs, and may not include those collections spawned
from other subscription services as well (Songs purchased from iTunes,
Amazon and Google's stores do work however). Any legit mp3 should transfer
according to Google, but Spotify uses a ".file" designation for their music
tracks, baffling Google's upload feature (and my PC player as well). Also,
if you deactivate your Google Play Music subscription, your downloaded
songs automatically delete.
- While the video feature is cool, I'd wager that it's this feature which
slows down the response of The GUI, and as of this first week, I have not
figured out how to turn the video loading off when playing a song (the
video won't play automatically- that still takes a button push, but it does
seem to buffer the video on a song before allowing playback of the track).
This I think adds to my general complaint of slow response time by the GUI.
- Unlike Spotify, there's no cross fade setting, so between that and the
lagging GUI, there are usually pauses between tracks being played.
----
This is it for now! If anyone has questions not addressed above, I'm very
happy to try to answer them. I might issue one more comprehensive update
if I find I've changed my feelings on aspects of this review, or if
anything said above proves to be incorrect. Hope this breakdown is
helpful, and again, unless this download limit shenanigans doesn't really
matter to you, I endorse the switch from Spotify Premium to a Google Play
Music subscription after putting it thru it's initial paces. Regardless of
your provider preference- Happy listening to one and all!
-NSB
Staff / Moderator/ 3 years ago in Social & Random