Google's Music Manager: Failing Forward to Greatness

After wrangling with some bugs for Google's online music service , I was finally able to download Google's Music Manager, a seperate application you can download on your Mac.

On Mac OS X, you download an disk image file (musicmanager.dmg), then drag the icon into the standard Applications folder on Mac OS X.  This is typical of most OS X applications these days.

This is application, is essentially a web browser port in an application, using QtWebKit libraries. It gives you a basic web client skeleton application that requires you to log into your Google account.

When I first launched the application, it crashed.  I am hoping this is not the expected user experience from Google.  But if at first you don't succeed, restart, so I relaunched the application, and it did not crash this time.

Once logged in during the first launch of the application, it will go through a secondary installation of background applications, ask you how you want to upload your music, and places headphones widget on your menu bar.  It will then begin the upload process, and for me, I chose to upload my whole spanking iTunes collection, because, well, it's free.

You can have your whole collection online, and then synchronize back down to devices.  Apple offers this service as well, which they'll charge you $$ for the service.  When you use the service with Apple, iTunes will then block you from synchronizing music to your devices.  Yes, that's right it BLOCKS you from synchronizing music from your desktop to your devices.  So kiss goodbye to the Steve Job's digital hub concept.

Conclusion: You can get access to your music collection online for free, and you are not blocked from synchronizing music to your devices, as you are with Apple's service.  You get the best of both worlds, though, the trip to get there from Google might be rough, with errors and crashes, but you get there.