Google Play

[Howard_Casto]

I woke up this morning and noticed this.  It seems interesting.

Basically Google Play is part of the google website now and thus is accessable on any internet ready device.  Now I'm not super fond of digital distribution, but this seems like a much smarter solution than the ones out there currently.

Basically you can buy or rent movies, music, books and android apps (or get them for free depending upon the liscense) from the google website.  It's a one-liscense deal so you can use them on any device you can log into your google account on, which would include laptops, pcs, android phones and tablets, google tv ect...

For one you can import music from your existing collection on the local device, like your pc, (has nothing to do with google play) into the gp cloud and it's instantly available on all your devices.

Things your purchased or imported just don't exist "in the cloud" either.  Once you log into the device you want to view it on, you can save it for offline viewing.  Things like your playlists and books are also synced so that no matter what device you open it in next, you are right where you left off.

This should nullify worries about a table or device not having a proper android market either, as now it's integrated into the website.

I'm still reading up on it, the fine print of the details isn't super clear, but to me it sure makes a lot more sense than services like netflix, the itunes store (BLAH!) or Xbox live's/ Sony's marketplace.

Anyway, I just wanted to make you guys aware of it.  If you decide to try it out please share!

[Hoopz]

Google Play is simply all of their media services re-branded and put under one "roof".  Google Music was in beta for awhile then opened up to everyone about a year ago (roughly).  Google Books wasn't in beta that I recall but is now under the same Google Play brand that Music is. 

It's nice to have everything in one place including the Android Apps.  When they first re-branded the app store and the apps a few weeks ago, I thought it was just a name change.  Good to see everything moving together.

[knave]

Last thing I read about google play was that you can't add books from another source. Is that still true?

[TopJimmyCooks]

I've used play for music only for a while. Uploaded a good amount of songs via the desktop music manager.  They stream well to my android phone when on wifi, little more shaky when streamed on 3g/verizon/droid 3.  So if I'm driving around town it works ok, pauses when the phone rings.  Going down the highway I use something else.  even with a good connection any sound notification causes a little hiccup in playback.  It doesn't play the notification sound over the music, but just glitches/pauses for a second. 

I really like having every song I ever bought available when I have my phone or internet/notebook available.  but I still rely on Ipod, etc. for general listening in in the car. 

It's not bug free.  You can't edit as much meta data as you can with itunes or winamp.  Sometimes you can't delete a song or album once uploaded.  hopefully they are working on these things. 

Google listen for podcasts is even more difficult to use mobile but I'm giving it a go.