Google is my choice for a consolidated digital locker right now; that was a major influencing factor why I switched. When the subscription service arrived, it filled the gaps that kept me from using Google Music exclusively.
What Google does well:
- Web client is dead simple, beautiful, and fully intuitive in my opinion
- Android client is excellent too (with the latest update that is)
- Well organized catalog of music
- Music recommendations and "radio" are on par with Spotify (if not better on occasion)
Where Google separates themselves from the competition:
- I can buy music to augment where subscription content is not available
- I can upload my own music (homemade recordings from friends, music absent from Google's catalog, or music purchased from other places)
- No software install required (for playing music)
- Software for syncing my local music to Google Music just works (works perfectly on Linux too!)
- Integrated with Google Play, which is integrated with Google Wallet; dead simple purchasing
- Google had ~5 songs that were absent or greyed out in Spotify for some reason (see below about a few missing songs though)
- Converting playlists by hand took a few hours; I'm sure it's a matter of time before scripts or an official conversion tool comes along
- Hit ~5 "Try again." errors; nothing serious. Trying again did the trick. With any new service I would expect small bugs like that.
- Out of a large list of music, there were about ~10 songs that weren't in Google's catalog. I'm hoping in time they seek to land deals with the smaller labels.
- Google is the master of search; there were a few things that didn't turn up in results like I would expect, but with the right phrase it would. It'll get better I suspect.
I started with Grooveshark, moved to Spotify, now I'm on Google Music. I'm happy with the consolidation; I'm just hoping this lasts for a while so I don't have to switch again.
