iTunes Match vs. Google Play Music on the desktop
In this first post, I will compare both services on the desktop. There is a second post with a look at iOS.
Updating your cloud collection
First off, the program that does update your music collection. On Apple's side, it's simply iTunes. On Google's side, it's an app called the Music Manager. The key difference I could find is about the way to add a new album once the initial sync is complete. On Apple's side, you need to manually add the album to your iTunes collection. On Google's side, if all your MP3s are in some central repos, the app updates your collection automatically. I couldn't get that working on Linux at home, probably because my music is on a samba share, meaning it's not on a local drive and the app doesn't get any notification when a file is updated. So I have to quit the app and launch it again for it to rescan my folders. Still simpler than Apple's approach. On the bad side, Google seems to store your MAC address on the first connection and forbids you to connect from any other MAC address. That's... bewildering.
One word on Tagging and Covers. iTunes Match is quite picky when it comes to covers and some albums never got a cover. There was very few albums in that state for me so it was no biggie, but still, Google's program is much better at handling covers. However, with Google, I could not figure out how to update a tag in a MP3 file. You can go to the website and update your song, but I would have liked the updater to automatically update the songs on which I modified any ID3 tag... On iTunes you can just delete the album and re-import it. It's not perfect, but it works.
So, on Google's side:
- Automatically uploads songs I add to my MP3s repos (even if this feature needs work).
- Works on Linux. I'm on Linux at home, so that's a plus for me.
- Better covers support. More formats supported (Apple's list is more restrictive). Both support the formats that count for me - MP3 and a tiny bit of AAC.
- The update works on any machine with iTunes on it. That's a plus if you want to update your collection from multiple places. Or if you ever change your PC. I cannot imagine that Google will keep that policy (I can only update from the first PC I ever updated from) in place for long but you never know.
- Updating a tag in an MP3 file can be propagated to the clients.
So, that was for the update part.
The player
Apple's player is, once again, iTunes. That's no tiny lightweight app, but the behemoth behaves. You might like it or not, but you can find you music and play it. It will register to the play/pause/next/etc keys on your multimedia keyboard. After a reboot you get your playlist where you left it. You can download songs to have them locally or stream your songs, your choice. If you choose to download songs, you can decide to view only the songs you have locally. That's useful when you only want to see part of your collection. I share the same iTM account between me, my wife and kids, so there is a sizeable part of my collection I'm not interested in.
Google went the way of the web app. So everything works on your browser of choice, providing you have flash. There is an option to get your sound played with the HTML5 output, but it doesn't work reliably and at some point no sound at all comes from the damn thing and you just have to press F5 to refresh the tab. And lose your playlist. Because the webapp doesn't store your current playlist. localStorage anyone? Anyways... Also, no way to listen to anything offline. You have to be connected. No biggie on a desktop, not so much on a laptop. But, for all its caveats, the app works and you find your music quickly. It is pleasant to use. Then, there is this "Artist art" that is an image depicting your artists. You kind of see it everywhere. All artists will have one, except those that don't and you cannot do shit about it. Can't change them (and they're pretty inconsistent so far). Can't avoid them. That's the way it is. Whether you like those images or not.
So, on Google's side:
- Works on all OSes where flash works, which is more than Apple's offering: Windows and Mac. Again, I use Linux at home...
- Remembers your playlist after a reboot / app restart.
- Ability to work offline. Also ability to hide the music you don't have locally.
- Handles multimedia keys on the keyboard.
Wrap up
Both offerings are solid and work well, unless you're offline where Google's offering will stop dead, or if you're on Linux and then it's Apple's offering that won't work (I run my iTunes in a Vista VM - quite the painful way). But more people are offline on their laptop than on Linux.Google wins on the update side and Apple's on the player side. Since one's supposedly spends much more time listening than updating/adding stuff in one's collection, I'll have to declare Apple the winner on the desktop. And believe me, I'm no fan of iTunes. And yes, Google's offering is Free vs 25€/year for Apple. I still think Apple's offering is stronger.
