by John | Aug 21, 2014 | Big Box Instructor, Deezer, Google Music, Instructor Tech Help, KEEPING IT FUN, Music, Spotify
A Playlist of offline video could make for a cool class 🙂
The word out is that YouTube is planning to launch a streaming service, similar to Spotify and Deezer, for music videos. The premium version would be advertisment free which would be very cool.
I realise that in the past we (and others) have pointed out that playing YouTube videos in a commercial setting (your class) is against YouTube's terms and conditions that prohibit displaying their videos in a club, bar or studio. iTunes, Spotify, Deezer and every other music service has nearly the exact T's&C's – no commercial use. Many of us are using these services to deliver our class music and your club or studio should be paying ASCAP and/or BMI for a commercial use license. My view* is that that license should cover your playing of music videos, just as it does for the audio versions of the songs. Or maybe there's a different license required for videos? If this becomes real I'll dig in and find out more.
From the androidpolice.com
Here's the basic rundown – YouTube is set to launch a service called YouTube Music Key, and Google is set to rebrand Google Play Music All Access to Google Play Music Key.
Specifically, it looks like YouTube Music Key will offer ad-free music, audio-only playback (for background or screen-off listening), and offline playback…
Of course, one of Music Key's major value propositions is that users will have access not just to official discographies, but to concert footage, covers, and remixes. Play Music already houses remixes and covers, but YouTube as a platform is significantly more open and workable for derivative content – the platform is much easier to add content to, and user discoverability is substantially different from Play Music. YouTube Music Key also promises to make suggestions for what to watch/listen to based on the other things you watch/listen to on YouTube.
Of course all of this is speculation / rumors – except that screenshot looks pretty legit > so we'll have to wait and see if/when it launches. Also if this will be available as an iPad app, or will it just be for android?
While we continue to wait for Deezer to make it here in the USA (which was promised for sometime in 2014) the potential that there could be an advert free, music video service that would play off a portable device means there's lots to look forward to 🙂
Does showing a playlist of music videos sound exciting to you?
*I'm not an attorney, so proceed at your own risk. If you have questions or concerns, seek competent legal representation.
by John | Nov 16, 2013 | Google Music, Instructor Training, Music
The orange arrow sets off-line mode.
I quit waiting for Google to launch an iPhone App, to go along with their Google Music All Access streaming music service, sometime ago. Two years ago, on November 16th 2011, I wrote Google Music — is it right for Spinning / Indoor Cycling Instructors?
We were just learning (and getting excited) about Spotify in the Fall of 2011. The promise of another similar service gave me hope that competitive pressure between these two would lead to continuously improving service = a better product for us to use in class.
I have to admit that until I received an alert about this, I had forgotten all about Google music. Spotify, now that the playlist timer is back, has been working very well for me.
So today there are a bunch of articles excitedly talking about the new Google Music All Access iPhone App. So right after my FTP class this morning, I downloaded the new App to my iPhone. Because I have a Google ID, my phone recognized me right away and…
then the confusion began 🙁
The App didn't work. It would show songs, but trying to play them, I kept getting an error message; unable to stream.
I must need to log in to the actual All Access service or something, I thought. Searching through every button or link I could find on the App relieved nothing. So I did a search on my computer (using Google) for Google Music All Access, which brought me to this page for Google Play Music. This is a big deal, so I figured they would have a large banner saying “Click Here to make your new App work”, but they didn't. You need to scroll way down the page to find anything – I had actually scrolled past it at first, left the page, then came back and then found the mauve banner that finally linked to where I could subscribe.
Why isn't there a way to subscribe right on your phone? Or at least a “this won't work without an All Access subscription, silly” notification. It would have prevented me wasting 20 minutes of my life.
Thankfully it's free for the first 30 days – then $9.95 a month. All Access offers a way to download a playlist for off-line use, which is good, but that's it for the functionality important to us. There's no option to change the order of songs on your iPhone – only on the desktop. There's no crossfade, or gapless playback options.
It may be that Google Music All Access was designed specifically to go against iTunes Radio. Unfortunately it has a long way to go before it will be of any value to me.
NOTE: If you found this looking for help with Spotify, we have lots of tutorials and informational articles here.
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by John | Nov 17, 2011 | Google Music, Latest News, Music
More stuff to learn
The Google Music Store/Service just launched. As you would expect, I'm already anticipating your questions so I'm all over this.
Nov 16 2013 update: I have an article posted about the new Google Music All Access iPhone App
I already know that many of you would enjoy an option to iTunes or Spotify. So I started this morning at 5:30am and set about learning everything I can about Google Music. I want to be able to help you decide whether or not this new music service from Google is a good option for you as a Spinning/Indoor Cycling Instructor. I'm particularly interested to see if Android Phone users will finally have a service equal to iTunes.
You can learn more about Google Music here and get started if you are adventurous 🙂
Google Music, what I know so far:
- The primary service is “Cloud” based, which means the music files are stored on a remote file server up in the clouds. Google want's all your computer files; music, pictures, software, etc… everything on their servers, not on your computer. If you use any online email service; Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hot Mail – those are all Cloud based services. iTunes and Amazon both offer a similar Cloud based system. Why should you care? I'll be explaining that in a future post.
- Google Music's files are MP3's – already for MixMeiser
- The first file I downloaded was at a very high quality bit rate of 320kbps. I normally don't pay attention to bit rate but this got me looking to see how this compares to iTunes. See the screen shots below for comparison.
- Yes, you could probably dump iTunes and convert over to the Google Music Player – but don't do anything drastic just yet.
- Google Music free tracks! You can find here– but like iTunes, you need to set up your credit card for future purchases.
When I saw Google Music had opened my first thought was; “oh great, more new software to learn” 🙁 If you felt something similar while reading this, my advise to wait and see what happens. I will be creating a number of tutorials for our ICI/PRO members that will explain everything you need to know about using Google Music. Stay tuned…
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