Hands-On With Google Music Beta

11.05.2011
While many of us Google I/O attendees were by that Google was launching its own cloud-based music service, we were excited to learn that every one of us would be getting a priority invite to the service. As a big music nerd, I was excited to give it a test spin. Can Google do music? Read on to find out.

What It's All About

Music Beta lets you upload your personal music collection to the cloud for streaming to your computer and other Android devices. Sound kind of familiar? You might recall that a music player this year, . But unlike Amazon's service, Google's Music Beta . So what's the appeal? It's simple and if you do everything through your Google account anyway, you might as well add music management to the mix. Furthermore, Android has always had a miserable music organization system so Music Beta is definitely a welcome addition to the platform.

Your music and playlists are automatically kept in sync. So, if you create a new playlist on your phone, it's instantly available on your computer or tablet. The music files that exist on your phone or tablet will be mixed in with your cloud-based files. The idea is that you don't really have to think where their music is stored because it is all in one place. The service also lets you access your songs offline so when you're on an airplane or your Internet is down, you can still rock out.

What You Should Know Before You Get Started

According to Google, Music is a free service-at least while it is in Beta. Take advantage of all that cloud storage while you can, I guess. The company gave no further details on pricing models or capacity limits. Right now, the beta allows for 20,000 tracks at any bitrate to be uploaded. Google could move to a tiered pricing model at various capacities and perhaps offer a free version that only allows for a handful of songs.