Google Play Music App is a neat app. It is a cloud storage based app that allows music to be accessed wherever the Google Play Music App is at. Which include Smartphones, Tablets and Computers. One of the biggest transitions if coming from the iPhone is the iTunes compatibility. A nice feature of the iOS platform is the ability to sync all iTunes content with iTunes and an iOS device.
As far as Android goes, there are many options to choose from. There is a plethora of music apps within the Google Play Store, companies like Samsung have created their own music manager called Kies and of course there is the stock music app on each device. Android for the most part has been a manual user experience, not many sync options like iTunes offers. Most of the time you have connect your device to the computer and copy & paste the music files over to the storage of the phone or SD card.
Google has been at work to make things easier in the music management department. With the release of the Google Play Store options to download Music from the Google Play Store has given the option to download straight to the device from the Store. The Google Play Store will then save all your music in the cloud and then gives you the option to download to your device through the Google Play Music App.
Amazon MP3 App also acts like the Google Play Music App. There is the option to browse music, download music and play music from the App. The biggest difference between the two is that Amazon offers the App on iOS devices.
The newest option for music management that Google Play offers is the ability to upload your iTunes music library directly to Google Play Music. If you like to keep an iTunes library and use Google Play Music this is a nice option. One of the cool features Google Play Music gives you is to set “Auto Upload” for when there is a media added to iTunes, it will send the file to Google Play Music too. If you are podcast subscriber this is an awesome feature. If you set your iTunes to automatically download podcast, the podcast will be sent to Google Play Music.
Once all desired content is within Google Play Music, you have to option to make the media offline or online. Meaning you may not want your whole iTunes library on your device (that might take up quite a bit of storage space), so you can choose what is on the device and what is in the cloud. Word to the wise, if you set your music to online, that means it is streaming, meaning it will use your mobile data. Hence, use WiFi while using online content or set up some playlists and set configure those to download/offline mode.
-This has been your “Everyday User Experience” Tip of the Day.
