Google Streaming Music to your smartphone

[WaLLy]

So I have a 300GB external hard drive; had it since '05-'06. It's bulky, and I usually don't use it because I have to plug it into the power outlet. The thing works but I have to play with the power connection that goes to it a bit before I'm able to turn it on. Of course, it's always better to have backups, so I need to take some preventive measures.

I could easily buy another external drive and have some portability with it but then again... I'd like to look into cloud storage that way I could access it from anywhere, just so long as I have Internet access.

My current external drive has roughly 180GB's of used space. Essentially I would like to back up all of it, but I have a feeling some of the stuff there is a bit old and possibly duplicated.

I first started looking at storing my mp3's (just above 4k songs) and found that Google Play allows you to upload and save 20,000 songs without any storage limit, for free! More than enough for me! What's the catch? Nothing really. Although, I did find a thing or two that ticked me off a bit, but hey, can't really complain when you're using their servers, for free right? The bad thing that I encountered was their music match making. It scans your music library and decides what to upload and what not to upload. I love hip hop, and most of it is explicit lyrics. What the match making did was instead of giving me the explicit version, it gave me the clean version. No big deal, it has a way to fix the non-matching song. However, it can be a PITA when you have no idea what songs are explicit.. I'm not gonna go through all 4k songs to figure that one out.

Google play also allows you to stream your library to your smartphone; just need an app for that. You can do it for free using your phone's browser but that's not how I want it. The app I'm using is gMusic (2 bucks on the app store). The streaming works great when you're on WiFi, but most of the time, I want to stream music to my car stereo using Bluetooth. While I'm using my phone's data, the music somewhat stops after a song finishes. Sometimes, it wont go to the next song either... I don't think it's my phone's data as Pandora works flawlessly without any playback issues.

I also started testing Amazon's Cloud Player. The app is free to download. Amazon allows you to have 250 songs on their servers for free. It'll cost you $25/year but they'll give you 250,000 song storage. So far, coming to work, the app itself has only had a small issue. The cause might have been my phone's data, although I looked at it and I had 3 bars. I'll be testing this app for another 2-3 days and see how it does.

Another free alternative might be to stream the music from my home server. I'd like to avoid this because then I'd need to put my server, modem & router on a UPS (which I don't have and don't want to buy). I would also need to buy other hard drives and have it redundant. Not something I want to do.

Now comes, where do I store the other stuff that I have on my current external drive? I'm not exactly sure just yet. I'll be going through the external drive with a fine tooth comb to delete what I really don't need, that way I know for sure how much GB's I truly need to keep and will help with seeing how much space I will need to pay for.

With all that gibberish being said, do any of you store your stuff in the cloud? If so, where and how much do you pay?

 

[HIBred]

Itunes match was 18 a year i think....it can also stream to my phone so i don't have to keep anything on my ipwn..it scans whatever you load (downloaded and all) and matches it with itunes and fixes anything,also it somehow liscences it...

 

[DamageINC]

I have songs stored in Google play music so i can listen to them via my tablet if i wish. Can't you just bypass them scanning your library and specify which albums/folders get uploaded? I used the music manager, selected my folders/albums and hit upload. None of my songs got replaced.

I've never seen or used the match making, it must be totally separate?

 

[WaLLy]

I have songs stored in Google play music so i can listen to them via my tablet if i wish. Can't you just bypass them scanning your library and specify which albums/folders get uploaded? I used the music manager, selected my folders/albums and hit upload. None of my songs got replaced.

I've never seen or used the match making, it must be totally separate?

Google doesn't replace my music files. What match making does is that if it recognizes the metadata and knows it has that specific song in their servers, that song wont get uploaded from my library. They'll just place what they already have into my account. 99.9% of my songs metadata contains only the Artist - Song Name. The reason for it is that I hate how iTunes decides to sort albums. It basically puts the album songs next to each other rather than alphabetizing all the songs. I've been used to that since I used MusicMatch Jukebox. The only way around it was to remove the album names.

edit:
And there's no way to turn off the match making feature.

 

[DamageINC]

By placing what they already have instead of using your song on your drive, it's being replaced with something else. At least that's how i see it.

That didn't happen with any of my music that i uploaded via the music manager.

It sounds like a useful feature normally since it would cutback drastically on the upload time. That's assuming the quality is just as good.

Maybe my songs contain so little profanity ( most of them none ) that they aren't affected. A few songs have a couple F bombs though.

 

[WaLLy]

Yes, that's the idea.

It's not all the songs get censored, just a few. I won't know the exact amount until I actually hear them all which I wont be doing anytime soon.

I'll probably just delete all the songs and upload most of the new stuff that I listen to anyway.

I'm still wondering if there's a place where I can store and stream my stuff without breaking the bank. Probably Amazon...

 

[DamageINC]

I want to know why my songs took hours to upload and didn't get replaced lol.

You used the music manager right? Almost all my music is pirated (even though i have the cd's for lots of it). Maybe that's why? Although i usually edit the metadata to reflect artist, song title etc etc.

 

[WaLLy]

My 4k songs took roughly 3-5 hours (don't recall the exact time). How long did yours take?

And yeah, I used the music manager. That's the only way to upload to Google as far as I know. You also need a music manager for Amazon.

I'll probably have to edit the metadata and reupload and see if that does the trick.

 

[DamageINC]

Mine took an hour or so. And i doubt it was even 500 songs. A lot of the songs i have are probably much bigger in file size because 1) i only use 320 bitrate or better and 2) the songs are probably longer in length. A lot of them are at least 5 minutes. Maybe hip hops are too, i dk.

 

[WaLLy]

Most of the songs I have are 320kbps as well, and they average 4-5 minutes.

 

[WaLLy]

Itunes match was 18 a year i think....it can also stream to my phone so i don't have to keep anything on my ipwn..it scans whatever you load (downloaded and all) and matches it with itunes and fixes anything,also it somehow liscences it...

Think it's 25 a year now. And it matches songs to 256 kbps. Don't think I'd want to downgrade. I'll have to see if they downgrade my songs that are already at 320 kbps.

 

[DamageINC]

Most of the songs I have are 320kbps as well, and they average 4-5 minutes.

Well :screwyou: then.

 

[MasterCLiP]

lol D all those 10 minute Metallica songs

Anyone else use Spotify?

 

[WaLLy]

I went ahead and deleted a TON of my music. Deleted everything that wasn't 320kbps. I went from ~4,400 songs to 654
Guess from here on out, I will only get and keep 320kbps in my library (and lossless, but not much of it).

Now I'm down to 5.6 gigs of music.

Time to also trim the fat on the movie collection. Might have stick with 720p movies if I'll be paying for storage.

Anyone else use Spotify?

I've used it. Since I don't have the premium ($10/month), I don't stream to the phone.

 

[WaLLy]

Couple options now that I've deleted a mass amount of music and other stuff from my external drive.

-Store all my songs on my iPhone now that I only have 5 gigs of it. I wont have to stream and use phone's data.
-Store all my pictures/videos in sites like SkyDrive (7GB free), Google Drive (5GB free), DropBox (last resort since it's only 2gigs free), COX Internet gives me 5GB free, but as soon as I'm in AZ I will upgrade interwebs, and that should bump the online backup I can get (free storage/backup)
-Store all my music on Google Play (free for the first 20k songs). The app still cuts off from time to time when I'm streaming on the iPhone.
-Buy a NAS: Western Digital or Seagate. I really don't need that much storage, but the idea of having the movies in a centralized area sounds really nice. Would be a nice media addition. Those 2 companies also have apps that I can stream the stored music/videos/pics/documents to the iPhone.


Thinking about getting a NAS. Wonder if I can snag one at Best Buy and if I don't like it, I'll return it

 

[Bambi]

I've just kept all my music on my hard-drive/computer and stream it via the app 'StreamToMe', but I guess that will not work if you want access to it all the time (not just when your computer is on). Also gives me all my films/recorded tv in 720p. Total cost £2 ($3?) and I have unlimited data on my phone. I have been staggered by how well it works/the quality of the streaming. One of my favourite/most useful apps. So I guess the seagate/western digital would do a similar job.

 

[WaLLy]

I'll give that app a try later tonight.

Although I have unlimited data, StraightTalk starts throttling after 2GB. When I had AT&T, they throttled after 3GB. So much for unlimited data..

 

[Bambi]

6GB last month. Got to get my moneys worth somehow.

 

[WaLLy]

6GB last month. Got to get my moneys worth somehow.

Where do you live and who's your carrier?

I'm not too worried about being throttled as I will only be streaming music while driving. If I have to look at music videos, or either of my movies, I'm either at home or at work when I have WiFi.

 

[Bambi]

I'm in the UK, on 'Three', so whole different kettle of fish. They are the only provider in the UK that genuinely provide unlimited data. Still don't quite know how I managed it, even with streaming lots of data.