Gadgetory

hey guys it's Joe with pocketnow.com Google music just came out of beta has a new app and a bunch of new features let's go take a look alright so let's go ahead and take a look at the app itself we have the same new Google music icon that we were introduced to with the honeycomb version of the app that's now available for Android 2.2 and above opening that up this is what I have on my now playing screen so not a lot has changed there you can thumbs up or thumbs down a track if you want it gives you some track information and of course lets you play that track so kind of cool stuff there looking at this in landscape mode gives you a little bit different view in fact let's do a some of the more of this landscape stuff let's go back a little bit this is the the recent playing screen and you can see it's really smooth really kind of cool it shows what you've played recently in this really nice fluid carousel we've seen stuff like that on iOS devices in the past so it's nothing unusual when you're looking at that in portrait mode however it's just straight up and down but this is just the app this is version 4.0 point 9 point something or other you can check to see if you've got the latest version by going into settings all the way down to the bottom it says music version 4.0 point nine point five zero nine right there at the bottom so this is the latest version that was released that takes advantage of some of the the new non-beta features of google music but lets go away from just the device for a minute and look at some web stuff so here we've got a motorola xoom the zoom out for you there and i will log in now this may not look like it and we got some real bad glare going on sorry about that guys this is a website this is google.com slash music and you can see everything that I've got in my library here all kinds of fun stuff its girls pretty well a little bit of graphic weirdness going on up top but let's see who that and artist was that we were just listening to you know what let's let's listen to some some AFI it's right up here near the top you can tell the list gets a little bit long but you do have this pagination feature over here on the side that you can kind of see where you are we'll go into AFI now this works on not only a large layout but also works on a smaller screen as well and it works on even the browser that comes with iOS devices it works in Safari it works on Chrome on Mozilla you know all kinds of stuff so here we've got a fi the the whole interface is pretty much the same it's very similar it's reminiscent enough that you're going to be familiar with it it's kind of a quiet song to begin with but really kind of cool now this is the same library I have this on my desktop computer I can stream this to my tablet I can stream this to my phone it's also suited through my Google ID so very very nice let's go to another website now this is going to be the Android Market so if you go to the market on your browser this is what you're going to see it's new you're now featuring up here in the top you've got new featured songs as well you also have a new featured music section over here and of course they're calling it out with a shopping music button on the screen so go ahead and jump into that we're gonna say that we want to use you know let's use the the browser for this demo and then we'll get into the market in just a minute the market app so that's gonna load up the new category that they just created for us being a little bit slow today because everybody is hammering it everybody's using it but here's what we've got top songs staff picks top albums free song of the day so you know let's say hey you know we like Bowie let's go ahead and do some Bowie here we're gonna again stick to the browser just for this demonstration you could have launched the the market app and and then essentially the same thing there so if you want to buy the whole album you can see here it's now nine dollars and forty nine cents that's the next big piece of news Google Checkout and Google Wallet are now essentially the same thing which is really a logical connection between the two I was surprised they didn't do that in the first place but they're now wiring that up even when you have a free track it is still going to to charge you through your wallet it's going to charge you nothing but you'll still go through the the checkout process so and interesting there and I'm not seeing that there we go that free song is right there if we want to listen to a preview let's cancel that really quick if you want to listen to a preview you can come over here and tap on the song and that gives you a play button which lets you listen to a full 90 second preview of the song right there you can decide if you want it or not it doesn't look like it registered in my tap so I'll do that again but kind of nice there that's really not what I'm trying to show you though let's go ahead into this free sound and vision that brings up the traditional checkout screen so as you're buying this for free or you sure you want to do that gives you a little advertisement on the bottom we'll go ahead and continue and once that's done and the purchase has been made you can see here it's got my Visa Card it's charging it nothing I'm gonna complete the purchase I'm now see there's that Google Wallet integration I am now going to be able to get an email that has this purchase so I have a receipt and it's now also been added to my library and is available on my on any of my apps to be able to stream it so really kind of cool there so let's let's come back over here just a minute and click the close button I don't want to put that down there but let's say now we want to come over here to a similar artist and let's open this up in the market now this is where there's some some difference your market may or may not have the music tab built in yet don't worry it will it's just gonna take a little bit of time to to get that update to everybody but you can see it's still got pretty much the same the same interface so here we are back you can see I don't have that available to me so let's go back to the to the web it's not the web back to that's the market that's music anyway let me get that set up and we'll be right back alright so we're back in the web view of the Android Market this is the track that I just purchased and you can see I now have a little share button right there let's go ahead and share that now this is sharing it via Google+ and you can see that's what it's doing over there it's bringing up Google+ a little bit hesitation there here are some of my circles I can share this with the public and I can share this with anybody I want to any of my circles so you're familiar with this if you use Google+ it will then put this snippet and any comment that you want in that post and people can then listen to that entire track once for free now that you can also do through the music app itself so let's go back here to teddy bear zero gravity if we come down to that we now have the share option so we'll tap on that once that is done I'm going to add this to my circles and I've got an android circle right there so we'll do that and let's go ahead and share it with the public as well on song so I've gone ahead and done that that's everything that I want to share about it we'll go ahead and post it's sending that and unfortunately there was a problem I'll figure that out and get that shared for you if you would like to have a copy or listen to a copy of this song again one time I'll go ahead and get that posted on my android circle if you want to join that wall the link to that over in the article at pocketnow.com so you can get all of my android news in there so you can keep up with Android on Google+ overall very cool we need to wait for a couple more days to to get the sharing stuff taken care of fact let me show you over here sharing the same song if I can find it zero gravity if I open this up there's the song again go down to the minified view here's the song you'll notice I don't have a Share Option on that yet I assume that's coming soon if I am wrong let me know in the comments but overall very cool now the main thing the coolest thing about this is not all of this I mean having your music available for you anywhere that's cool being able to have your library on multiple devices that's cool having it all automatic that's amazing the big change here is the fact that this now lets artists upload their tracks and price them just like they do apps on the market they can price an entire album they can price individual songs they can do both they can relieve stuff for free and there is the distribution channel all they then have to do is market it and there they're making money how much money seventy percent of the revenue is going to go to the artist compare that to your regular recording artists and it's nowhere near that amount so very cool for independent artists in fact if you've got an artist under contract this is a good way for them to release some of their unreleased tracks live concerts and whatnot that may not be under contract with the big labels and still be able to to get some revenue coming in there this I think is going to be a major shift in music it this is this is huge more and more independent artists are going to be able to come and publish their music more and more songs are going to be available to you and through some intelligent technology you can be able to discover and add similar songs similar to what pandora is doing to playlist and track them down and get recommendations for artists you may never have heard of so overall very very cool this is game-changing and we're just getting in and getting started in it very neat if you have any comments or questions make sure you leave those that down in the comments below and if you want to listen to teddy bears zero gravity make sure you check out the links over to my Google+ feed also in the links at pocketnow.com