Even if you don't want to use Google Music as your full-time music player, it's become one of the best ways to back up and access your music library from anywhere. It doesn't need to be your main player; you can still reap the benefits of Google's free music backup and on-the-go streaming service. Here's everything you need to know about setting it up as a secondary player and getting around its few quirks.
Google Music started off as a cool service, but it wasn't without some pretty big annoyances. Since then, Google has slowly improved it to the point where it's one of the best music webapps out there—not to mention a great way to sync your library to the cloud and get access on your mobile device (for free, no less). While it isn't as easy as set-and-forget, it doesn't take a ton of work to set up, as long as you know its limitations and quirks out of the gate. Even if your using Google Music as your go-to music player now, you might still want to peruse this—I can almost guarantee you'll learn something new.
Uploading Your Music
Getting your MP3s into Google Music is a somewhat drawn out process, since it'll all take awhile to upload, but after the initial upload everything should be pretty easy. Here's what you'll need to do to get your music up and running in the cloud.
Pre-Upload Maintenance
Before you start uploading, you'll need to make sure your music is ready for Google. That means everything has to be in MP3, M4A, WMA, FLAC, or OGG format. Protected AAC (M4P), Apple Lossless, WAV, AIFF, and RA are not supported. Note that it actually converts FLAC, OGG, and AAC files to 320kbps MP3 when it uploads, so you won't get them in the same format you have on your computer. That means FLAC files will be 320kbps, while AAC and OGG files will be compressed even more, which is bad. As such, we highly recommend keeping MP3 or FLAC versions of your files if you want to get the most out of the versions in the cloud—see our explainer on music bitrates for more information.
Next, if you haven't taken the time to whip your music's metadata into shape, this is a good time to do it, since you won't want to do it twice (once the files are uploaded). If you don't want to upload your whole collection, you'll also want to make a playlist now containing the songs you do want to upload. As we've recommended before, a good way to do this is to sort your library by "last played", "plays", or "highest rating" to get a good idea of the most important stuff (that is, if you don't want to do it by hand).
Performing the Initial Upload
To start the process, download the Music Manager application and start it up. It will ask you where you want it to watch for music: iTunes, Windows Media Player (for Windows users), or a folder on your hard drive. I use iTunes, since I want it to sync all my playlists in addition to my music. Once you decide, it'll scan your library and start uploading. Keep in mind this will take awhile—like, days or weeks—so just forget about it for awhile. Make sure it's set to start with your computer under Music Manager's Advanced tab, and leave your computer on whenever you can.
You might also want to tweak a few other settings in the Advanced tab. I unchecked "Include podcasts" for the initial uploads, and then re-checked it later. This assures that your music is given priority over your podcasts, which you can always upload later if you want them. You can also tweak the amount of bandwidth Google Music uses, which is nice if you're also uploading other files, or if you are experiencing issues with voice and video chat. I usually leave it as "Fastest possible" unless I need to do something bandwidth-intensive.
Uploading Future Music
From now on, as long as you keep the Music Manager running at all times, it will upload any new music to your Google Music account. It will also upload playlist changes. There are a few small quirks, though, that could result in a Google library that isn't perfectly synced. Here are some of the issues I've noticed:
Deleting files on your computer won't delete them in Google Music: If you decide you don't like a particular album, or that you want to replace its files with higher quality versions, Google Music won't recognize this. As such, you'll have to delete the original songs from Google Music whenever you delete them from your computer.
You can't re-upload files you've deleted from Google Music: On the other hand, if you delete something from Google Music—say, if Google Music uploaded it before you got a chance to fix its grossly disorganized metadata—you can't re-upload it later. There is a fix for this, however. If you delete something from Google Music that you eventually want back, open up Music Manager, go to the Advanced tab, and click the "Change" link next to where it lists the source of your music. Go through the process again, choosing the same location you did before—that is, if you were using iTunes, be sure to pick iTunes again—and it will get ready to re-upload all your music. However, even though it looks like it's going to re-upload everything, it'll only re-upload songs and playlists you've deleted. It's a bit of a hacky workaround, but it works.
Sometimes it just gets wonky: I haven't figured out why this is yet, but I've noticed that every once in a while, a group of songs or a playlist will just get a little out of sync. Sometimes you get a string of duplicates in a playlist, sometimes a group of tracks will still have old metadata even if you changed it first, and sometimes playlists just don't sync your changes. Simple fixes can be done right from Google Music: just click the arrow next to a song or album and hit Edit. For more complicated mess-ups, I recommend deleting the album or playlist and using the above method to get it back. It isn't ideal, but it looks like Google still hasn't ironed out perfect synchronization yet, so workarounds will have to do for now.
All in all, you shouldn't have too many problems. But, if you don't use the webapp a ton, it's worth checking in every once in a while to make sure everything is in order (especially after you add new music to your library).
Using the Player
Once your music's uploaded, listening to it is a cinch. You can use Google Music just like you do any other desktop or web player. You can browse by artist, album, or genre, as well as search for whatever you're looking for. Double-click on a song to play it and even drag it to a playlist to add it to that playlist (but know that those changes won't be synced back to your desktop library. It even has a few keyboard shortcuts, just like Gmail, that help you navigate the interface with ease. You can also hit the "Shop" button in the top right corner of the player to head to Google Music's music store, which has a great selection of both paid and free music (not to mention some exclusive live cuts from popular bands).
Google Music isn't chock full of music playing features, but it does have a neat thing called Instant Mix, which, like iTunes' Genius, creates a 25 track playlist for you based on a seed song. It's a good way to throw together a playlist really quickly, though it isn't quite as good as Genius and its other competitors.
Lastly, if you ever want to re-download the music you've uploaded, you can do so by finding the album or song, clicking on the arrow next to the album art or track name, and choosing Download. Alternatively, you can open up the Music Manager, go to the Download tab, and download your entire library. If you've purchased music from the Google Music store, you can only download it two times from the web interface (though you can download it as many times as you want from Music Manager, packaged with the rest of your library).
Listening On the Go
One of the best things about Google Music is that you can stream your entire library to your mobile device for free, which is something other services like Spotify and Rdio don't offer. The experience is a bit different, depending on your platform.
Android
On Android, just download the official Google Music app to get started. It works much like the default music app on your phone—you can sort by arist, album, playlist, and recently played, and you can swipe between the screens easily. You can also turn your phone on its side for some other really great, album art-based views of your library.
When you listen to a song, Google Music will automatically cache it, so the next time you listen it'll have it on hand and it won't need to use your data to stream it. If you want to cache certain tracks that you know you'll listen to a lot, you can just long-press on an album or playlist, then tap "Available Offline". It will download it the next time you're connected to Wi-Fi and keep it on your device so you can listen to it, no connection needed. You can edit preferences for this feature in the app's settings, as well as show only offline music by hitting the menu button at any time.
iOS
iOS users don't have an official app, but they do have a few choices. Google Music has created an official webapp designed for iOS, and frankly it isn't that bad. It's not quite as fast as a native app, but it has all the animated transitions and swiping gestures you get on the Android client, and it looks great. It doesn't let you pin songs for offline use, but it's more than usable in a pinch.
Alternatively, you can use previously mentioned gMusic for iOS, which can stream your library to your iPhone via a native app. It has lock screen integration, AirPlay support, Last.fm scrobbling, and even offline listening. Google may not have created a native app for iOS, but even if they did, they'd be hard pressed to compete with gMusic—at least in terms of features.
Programs and Extensions that Make Google Music Better
Lastly, while the Google Music webapp is pretty great, it isn't perfect, and could use some extra features. With a few extra downloads, though, you can turn it into a killer player. If you're going to use Google Music, we recommend checking the following apps and extensions out to enhance your experience.
Music Plus is a Chrome extension created by our very own Adam Pash, which adds a popup controller, HTML5 notifications, Last.fm scrobbling and artist bios, global keyboard shortcuts, and lyric fetching to make the webapp truly awesome. If you use Google Music at all, this extension is absolutely worth having.
Google Music Downloader is the closest Firefox equivalent to Music Plus, offering artist bios from Last.fm and global hotkeys to Google Music. It also gives notifications from the add-on bar when you change tracks. It includes a music downloading tool as well, but now that Google includes this, there's no real reason to use it.
If you're a Windows user, previously mentioned GMusic adds a small mini-player to your desktop, getting Google Music out of your tab and into its own window, and supports the media keys on most keyboards. It's only downside is that it can't use all the features of the above extensions, since you don't have a browser to install them in—so you have to decide what's important to you.
You may not be ready to replace your desktop player with Google Music, but there's really no need. With a bit of forethought and the knowledge of Google Music's ins and outs, you can keep your desktop and cloud players truly in sync so you have music on your desktop when you're home, and Google Music everywhere else. Got any other Google Music tips we didn't mention, or an alternative cloud player you prefer like Subsonic? Let us know in the comments.