+Matt Phillips reminded me to post.
OK, OK, OK… I gave it a fair shot. I gave Google Play Music All Access a fair shot, and have been using it almost an entire month.
Verdict?
While I get loads more new, unheard music from it than I do from Pandora, Google Play Music All Access is almost completely unusable for my desired purposes.
I use streaming music services to listen to music while I go back and forth to work.
Pandora skips maybe for 10 seconds, once or twice a month.
Google Play Music All Access skips 2-3 minutes at a time, at least twice per drive.
The result is that I don't listen to music on my drive anymore.
Pandora is now "Always the same old shit" and GPMAA skips so often that it sucks.
Poor showing, Google.
Really? Wow, I'm sorry to hear that… I've had some occasional bugs on mobile, but the browser version has been perfect for me. In fact, I've pretty much got the folks at work completely converted from the store's paid Spotify subscription! ;D
I have to say, before the update, I rarely had streaming issues. After the same results you are seeing. I have not done all access this is just streams from my library, however, I knew it would not be any different.
Performance is not the best and it still has plenty of rough/sharp edges. I'll be canceling the trial next week and finally giving the Spotify Trial a shot.
I keep my music on the SD card .. no streaming/skipping/lag issues here – plus I can listen on the plane. Update the SD card music files once a month with whatever new stuff hits my fancy from the previous month's grabs
+Bruce Kraemer half of smart phones do not come with SD cards. So could still be a problem for many.
What I'm seeing here are issues with the mobile app, same as I've had. I tend to use the service more on PC and that has been entirely flawless and incredible. Like I said, I've mostly converted the Spotify users here at work (largely because Spotify sucks), but I agree the mobile app has its share of issues. I'm not giving up on it, though. I have complete faith that +Google, +Google Play and the +Google Developers will address the app issues in updates. In the meantime I'll continue to love the service on PC and use it on occasion via mobile 🙂
+Jason Parr That's far from true. Most Android phones have SD card slots. iPhones and very few Android phones, such as the N4, don't have this option.
They just need to fix the streaming size.
Most new HTC phones, all nexus phones, many new lg phones have no SD cards and when they do often have little internal memory (mid and lower range phones)
+Matt Phillips The Desktop version, when I've used it, has worked flawlessly for me, too.
The problem being that I never listen to music at my desk! =)
There are two other features that are missing.
1) I can't add multiple "seed" artists to an All Access radio station.
For instance: adding Hayseed Dixie (Bluegrass covers of Rock music) and Vitamin String Quartet (Classical covers of Rock music) to the same Radio station…
2) No "Shuffle All Radio Stations" functionality. If I want to listen to Muse Radio, I get only Muse Radio. There's no way to shuffle ALL of the music types that I like into one never ending radio station. This plays back into issue #1, in that I have to create a Hayseed Dixie station, AND a VSQ radio station, and I can't listen to both at once.
That's a tiny minority of Android phones. And yes, my primary complaint about Google Music ever since the first day of beta has been the streaming size, it's absolutely insane. If Pandora can stream high quality in small files, why can't Google?!
+Jason Parr boo 🙁 I'm not quite a fan of the industry drive toward reliance on data usage. They want you to upload your own stuff to the cloud, then to access it you have to download it again. each time. Yes I understand the convenience of being able to access all your stuff from any device anywhere, but the notion pushes us toward total reliance on network availability (including affordability). Soon the unlimited data plans (yes I'll include VoIP) will be scrapped in favor of usage driven revenue models (again), and the hardware and cloud-based services industries are (unwittingly, perhaps?) collaborating with the Telephone companies who own the Internet backbone to support that effort.
Convenient is never free …
TBH my biggest gripe about Google Play Music All Access is all the Creed it plays for me on mobile. And it invariably locks up while it's playing Creed.
Thank god mine has never committed such an egregious offense as playing any of the various Creedleback bands. I'd probably break my phone/PC.
Right! I am not saying I like it, just saying that is the direction. But even with that said android does not always play well with SD either.