I have not been been much of a fan of Google’s play into music — but today, I think I might just change my mind with my new “Google Play Music All Access” subscription. The new service is an odd dog, to be sure, but it seems to be worth both its bark and its bite so far.
I like how Google always gives you a free month to poke around a new service. Giving a $2 discount to early adopters for the All Access Music service is another fine step.
Once you join, you are taken to your Google Music page and there’s a new Radio section. The instruction to “Listen Now” is confusing. I guess you type in the search box the music you want and then Google will find it for you.
I decided to do a search for “Fall Out Boy” since I have some of their old music in my Google Music library and I decided not to purchase their new album because I didn’t like the sound.
You can see how the new Fall Out Boy album is presented for listening — along with other songs of theirs — that are already in my Google Music Library.
It looks like you can add albums to your Google Music library without actually purchasing the music — this is the Spotify-like meme, but I find it confusing. Which songs are mine and which songs am I renting? If I stop my service, will these added albums be deleted from my library?
I was confused, so I checked out my Google Music settings to see if there was a section that told me about my rented music. All I learned was that I was still maxed out and forbidden from uploading any new songs from my local music library — and that my next bill date for the music service was June 14, 2013.
I decided to do a search for Chris Brown. I’ve never purchased any of his songs and none of his work is in my local music library.
Google All Access Music presented me with Chris Brown radio options and album options. I don’t know why one would ever choose listening to a radio mix over an album, but maybe I’m not getting the beauty in the mix of the service.
I clicked on Chris Brown and listened to some live album music. It sounded okay and worked as advertised. I did not add him to my library.
Google Play Music All Access is a great start. I’m not thrilled with the streaming quality of the music, though. Google needs to fix that and somehow up the “high fidelity” of these songs to match the robust sound Spotify delivers, but this is a good lure back into Google Music for me, and I can only hope they’ll get their act together and allow many more uploaded songs than just 20,000.