Google Play Music almost confirmed for Music Freedom?

[Almeuit]

John Legere tweeted this... Thoughts? .


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[Aquila]

hurray!! nice move. most of the data i use goes to google play musics.

 

[oscari]

I think they're just waiting to get a few more services so they can have a brand new batch of music apps that you can use that doesn't count on your data plan. I could be terribly wrong and probably am.

 

[zorak950]

I've been sure all along that they'd follow through eventually, but I admit I'd hoped they would be faster about it.

 

[Bigballer]

Really wish he would push this sooner....

 

[brkaras]

Dude on love T Mobile...man they have stepped up in the industry

 

[AnotherCookie]

Already have unlimited on my plan but it's great to have a choice. Not sure if this will include personal collection or whatever.

 

[Almeuit]

Already have unlimited on my plan but it's great to have a choice. Not sure if this will include personal collection or whatever.

It should since you're still streaming from them.

 

[zorak950]

I'm still not convinced either way. I hope it does, obviously, but we'll see.

 

[Almeuit]

I'm still not convinced either way. I hope it does, obviously, but we'll see.

The only way it wouldn't is if Google stored it on a completely different server and they didn't add that address to the "bypass" list.

 

[raptir]

The only way it wouldn't is if Google stored it on a completely different server and they didn't add that address to the "bypass" list.

I'm sure they are on a separate server... wouldn't make much sense to mingle user data (uploads) with company data (streaming library, purchase library). Other services have shown that they are readily able to distinguish the different types of data anyway, with ads/album art counting towards your usage while the music itself does not. So it's really a question of if they will make user uploaded files not count as well. If they didn't, I'm not sure how they would handle "matched" music, since Google swaps your file out with their own 320kbps file if they are able to match it. I wonder how this works with iTunes? They do specifically say iTunes Radio on the Music Freedom site.

 

[Almeuit]

I'm sure they are on a separate server... wouldn't make much sense to mingle user data (uploads) with company data (streaming library, purchase library). Other services have shown that they are readily able to distinguish the different types of data anyway, with ads/album art counting towards your usage while the music itself does not. So it's really a question of if they will make user uploaded files not count as well. If they didn't, I'm not sure how they would handle "matched" music, since Google swaps your file out with their own 320kbps file if they are able to match it. I wonder how this works with iTunes? They do specifically say iTunes Radio on the Music Freedom site.

By server I mean url.. Of course different servers for music and storage.. Hundreds of servers to host that stuff.. But it uses one url... Then they handle it after that .

 

[raptir]

By server I mean url.. Of course different servers for music and storage.. Hundreds of servers to host that stuff.. But it uses one url... Then they handle it after that .

Well, you navigate to one URL to access it, but it could be fetching the files from two different URLs. Look at Spotify. You're still going to play.spotify.com, yet the album art counts towards your data usage while the music does not.

 

[Bigballer]

Well, you navigate to one URL to access it, but it could be fetching the files from two different URLs. Look at Spotify. You're still going to play.spotify.com, yet the album art counts towards your data usage while the music does not.

does album art really use that much data....? An extra 50 mb every month? Maybe?

 

[Almeuit]

does album art really use that much data....? An extra 50 mb every month? Maybe?

It really shouldn't add to much unless you're listening to a boat load of music.


Sent from my T-Mobile Note 3 using AC Forums.

 

[raptir]

does album art really use that much data....? An extra 50 mb every month? Maybe?

Honestly, I'm not sure what kind of quality most services use. A low quality JPG could be 50kB, while a high quality PNG could be over 3MB. A reasonable resolution JPG would usually be around 1MB though, which can add up. Just doing a quick search it looks like the average song length in the most played songs on iTunes is between 3:30 and 4:00. If we go with the high estimate than your average song is about 9MB at the highest quality any service streams (320kbps). If you're playing radio/shuffling music (so it's not using the same album art for every song), 10% of your data usage could be album art. If you streamed two hours of music a day and there were no album art repeats then you could go through 900MB of data in a month. Also consider that if you are browsing through Spotify/Play Music it pulls down artwork for a lot of albums that you may not be listening to. And they have the larger, high-quality artist images when you tap on an album/artist. I was just able to go through 10MB of data in about three minutes browsing through the New Releases section of Play Music.

Anyway, the point of that post was more to point out that T-Mobile has already shown that they can differentiate between album art and music within a single app, so it doesn't seem like a stretch to say that they could differentiate between uploaded music and subscription music as well. I'm not sure that they will, just saying that they could.

 

[Bigballer]

Honestly, I'm not sure what kind of quality most services use. A low quality JPG could be 50kB, while a high quality PNG could be over 3MB. A reasonable resolution JPG would usually be around 1MB though, which can add up. Just doing a quick search it looks like the average song length in the most played songs on iTunes is between 3:30 and 4:00. If we go with the high estimate than your average song is about 9MB at the highest quality any service streams (320kbps). If you're playing radio/shuffling music (so it's not using the same album art for every song), 10% of your data usage could be album art. If you streamed two hours of music a day and there were no album art repeats then you could go through 900MB of data in a month. Also consider that if you are browsing through Spotify/Play Music it pulls down artwork for a lot of albums that you may not be listening to. And they have the larger, high-quality artist images when you tap on an album/artist. I was just able to go through 10MB of data in about three minutes browsing through the New Releases section of Play Music.

Anyway, the point of that post was more to point out that T-Mobile has already shown that they can differentiate between album art and music within a single app, so it doesn't seem like a stretch to say that they could differentiate between uploaded music and subscription music as well. I'm not sure that they will, just saying that they could.

I wonder that too. I'm really hoping tmobile will just let the uploaded music on Google Play swing by. Uploaded music is uploaded music. It shouldn't make a huge difference whether it's "streamed" or "pre-uploaded." I believe the highest bitrate Google Play will allow is 320 kbps, which is on par with some of the higher end streaming services. However, I have a gut feeling John Legere will just let the uploaded Google Music swing by. He doesn't seem like a complete ******* to pull that on the customers considering streamed music is streamed music.

Some Google music art is already "pre-stored" on your phone whether the music is stored on your phone or not. I think you're running high up, dense pictures. Most pictures I come across are low, low pictures. They're probably compressed to death as well. Most of the album art on Pandora is crap, pixelated. Spotify displays more album art than Pandora, pandora tends to display minimum album art.

Now you have me thinking. If album art counts toward your data, what about the data involved in the actual flicking through the menu of these streaming services?

 

[raptir]

I wonder that too. I'm really hoping tmobile will just let the uploaded music on Google Play swing by. Uploaded music is uploaded music. It shouldn't make a huge difference whether it's "streamed" or "pre-uploaded." I believe the highest bitrate Google Play will allow is 320 kbps, which is on par with some of the higher end streaming services. However, I have a gut feeling John Legere will just let the uploaded Google Music swing by. He doesn't seem like a complete ******* to pull that on the customers considering streamed music is streamed music.

If we had someone with an iPhone and iTunes to test it on, we could see how they handle it there. Like I said above, the music freedom site specifically says iTunes Radio, not iTunes in general. And the poll for voting on the services to add called it Google All Access, which specifically refers to the subscription service.

Some Google music art is already "pre-stored" on your phone whether the music is stored on your phone or not. I think you're running high up, dense pictures. Most pictures I come across are low, low pictures. They're probably compressed to death as well. Most of the album art on Pandora is crap, pixelated. Spotify displays more album art than Pandora, pandora tends to display minimum album art.

The album art in Google Play is all pretty high quality. I don't use Pandora or Spotify so I can't really speak to that. And yes, some of it is stored after you've viewed it but that doesn't change the fact that it has to be downloaded the first time. My estimates were kind of a "worst-case scenario," but my point is that it can add up. Yeah, for Pandora maybe the quality is low but Play uses some higher quality artwork that can still amount to some usage.

Now you have me thinking. If album art counts toward your data, what about the data involved in the actual flicking through the menu of these streaming services?

Yes, data used moving through the menus counts as well. It's only the actual music stream that is exempt.