Google Music Beta in its current stage offers storage space in the cloud to store up to 20,000 songs. Plans are to turn the service into a paid service after the beta. Google did not comment on pricing at all, or if they will be offering a free basic plan next to the paid Music beta plans. They could design the service similar to how Picase is offering free limited space for all users, and more space and options for paying customers. For now, Music Beta is free, but you should keep in mind that this might change in the future.

Music Beta currently is all about hosting and streaming of music. You wont find an integrated music shop on Music Beta, mostly because there have not been any agreements with record labels as of yet. Google mentioned that they are in talks with major record labels. For now, if you use the Shop for Artist feature you are taken to a media portal on the Google website instead. That’s a step backwards compared to Amazon’s offering which offers access to a complete mp3 store on their site.

On the music side of things, mp3, aac, flac and wma files are supported. All other music formats are not supported, which may be especially problematic for Apple users who may have part of their music collection in m4p and m4a format. Flac users need to know that Google will re-encode their files to 320 kbps mp3s.

Computers and Android devices can currently be connected to Google Music. There is an eight device limit for streaming in place though, which means that you may need to de-authorize devices regularly if you got more than eight devices, or devices in the authorization list that you no longer posses.

How do you get music on Music Beta?

PC users need to download Music Manager, a proprietary software that can import music from iTunes, the music folder or any other folder on the computer’s storage devices. The software can sync music that you add to your iTunes library with Music Beta automatically.

One severe limitation is that you cannot customize the music selection. Say you have 10,000 songs on iTunes. You cannot pick songs that you want uploaded to Music Beta. If you select iTunes in the Music Manager, all songs will be uploaded. Your only option is to use the other folder option during start up and pick each folder manually. That’s uncomfortable especially if the music library is large.

Another limitation is that music cannot be played in Music Manager. That’s bad if you need to check out songs before you sync them with Music Beta.

I cannot say for sure, but it appears as if the Music Manager is the only way to transfer music to Google Music Beta. Apps are available for Android and tablet PCs but those appear to miss uploading options (correct me if I’m wrong please).

Music that is online can be streamed to any connected and supported device. Caching is used on Android so that recently played music becomes available offline as well.

There is no option to download or share music.

Music Beta Invite Only

Music Beta is an invite only service currently. Users from the United States can request an invite here. Users from outside the country can use proxy or vpn connections to outsmart the country detection on site.

Still, you need to wait until you receive an invitation to Google Music Beta before you can make actual use of the service.

Verdict

Music Beta in its current stage has several limitations that will keep many users from signing up for the service. Among them the restriction to US-only users, no music shop integration, the mediocre Music Manager, streaming only and the prospect that the service will turn commercial after beta.

Especially the concentration on streaming may be seen negatively, considering that many cell phone data plans are not exactly generous in the free Megabyte department.

Have you watched the keynote or received an invite yet? What’s your take on the service in its current form?

Upon first launch the program will display a directory browser that can be used to select the folders that contain music on all connected hard drives. All discovered files are automatically added to the library based on their ID3 tags. The library itself comes with several subfolders that sort the music collection by genre, rating, composer or artist automatically which makes it very easy to access specific music faster than usual. Specific information from iTunes and Windows Media Player (like ratings) can be imported into MediaMonkey.

The tagging features of MediaMonkey come in handy at this point. Most music collections contain at least a few files that are not tagged properly and MediaMonkey offers the tools to correct these issues automatically. The music manager makes this easy as it will list all files with improper tagging in a Files to Edit folder in the library. These audio files might appear in other folders as well depending on the ID3 tags that are missing (it will be listed in the genre if the genre is set but not in the album folder if the album is not set).

Files to Edit will sort the music with missing ID3 tags into different folders that specify what is missing (e.g. missing genre, unknown album art). A right-click on any folder or one on selected files will provide the option to automatically tag the music based on file information or by searching for the information on the Internet. The Internet option makes use of various Amazon stores to find the information needed to properly tag the audio files.

It is also possible to manually edit the tags for a specific audio file or multiple files to fine tune the tags or edit specific tags that could not be identified by automatic tagging. This in combination with the auto renaming features can turn an unsorted improperly tagged music collection in a properly tagged and named collection in no time.

New music can be added to the software program by adding new locations that should be searched for music, by ripping audio CDs, using the build in file monitor or syncing devices like Apple’s iPod or other mp3 players with the music manager.

Adding new locations will simply repeat the steps outlined above and add any new music that is found in those locations to the MediaMonkey library. MediaMonkey comes with the option to rip audio CDs and use the information offered by FreeDB to tag them automatically. The build in file monitor is only available in the Gold version of MediaMonkey. This handy feature will monitor specific locations on the local computer system and spring into action if it discovers new music which then gets added to the program.

Another option offered is the ability to convert music into different music formats using build in

• the MP3 converter
• AAC/M4A converter
• OGG converter
• WMA converter
• WAV converter
• FLAC converters.

MediaMonkey Gold is not only a tool to properly maintain a music collection. It comes also with all the media playback capabilities – and then some – that one would expect from a all-in-one audio manager.

• Play: Play CDs and digital audio files (popular formats like MP3, AAC/M4A, OGG, WMA*, MPC, APE, FLAC, WAV, etc supported) or use MediaMonkey in combination with Winamp to use Winamp as the player. Music volume can be adjusted automatically and the equalizer and dsp audio effect plugins allow to fine tune the playback.
• Multiple Music Collections: Ability to filter large music collections into smaller collections like Rock, Classic Music and Podcasts which can be customized with their own playback settings.
• Playlists: Playlists can be created by dragging and dropping music, using the auto-playlist option or auto-dj to automatically create mixes.
• Burn: Option to burn music to CD.
• Visualization: Display visualization on the computer screen while playing music.
• Reports and Statistics: Ability to create statistics and reports that can be viewed in the program and exported into xml files.
• Customization and Plugins: MediaMonkey can be customized and extended with plugins and new skins that are offered on the developer’s website.
• Virtual CD: Ability to catalog the CD audio collection to keep tracks of CDs

Users interested in MediaMonkey can download the free version right away from the developer’s website:

Ghacks Giveaway:

We are giving away ten 25 licenses of MediaMonkey Gold to users who reply to this article. Please tell us which feature excites you the most (if any).

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Raju from TechPP is also offering MediaMonkey Gold today. Go over there for another chance to win this excellent music manager.

The interface is divided into two main levels. The left sidebar offers a folder browser with some filtering options at the bottom. It is for example possible to filter for specific audio formats or file names. The confusion can be attributed to the right main window. This window is divided into a main tab with buttons to rename, tag, edit, organize, retrieve online information and play. The two lower menus change depending on the main tab that is selected by the user.

The rename tab for example contains buttons to scan, open or save playlists, open the rename options, execute scripts and handle changes (like undo or ignoring files. More confusing than that are main options like the organize or online tabs where the choice in the second menu level changes the third menu.

Here are some of the highlights of the music manager:

• Batch rename of files using Tag/Filename/Folder name/Audio file information.
• Batch Tag update.
• Manual / single file editor.
• Album/filename rename & update using freedb.org or www.allmusic.com, Amazon, and custom sites
• Powerful library.
• Encode/decode your files with LAME,Ogg Vorbis or mpcenc. (trans code with out losing tag information from one format to the other)
• Restructure the files on your hard disk ( copy,move or even create shortcuts ) in new user defined location based on Tag field information.
• mp3, ogg, mpc, ape, flac, aac, apl, wv, mp4, ofr, spx file support

The Godfather is available at the developer’s website. It is compatible with most Windows operating systems and can be downloaded as a stable or beta version.

Songbird is able to import the iTunes music library and playlists if iTunes is installed on the computer system as well. It does not really make sense to use both iTunes and Songbird unless iTunes is used to purchase music and fill music gadgets like the iPod or iPhone as Songbird provides an equal – and sometimes even advanced – functionality otherwise.

Users who do not use iTunes can import music easily by adding folders from the local computer system. Songbird will automatically recognize tags and categorize the music accordingly. One of the most interesting features is the support for plugins. A handful of plugins are installed by default unless the user opts out of the installation. Plugins expand the functionality of the music manager. Available are for example a Shoutcast Internet radio browser and player, the Last.fm radio player, concert information, various skins and interface enhancements and dozens of additional plugins that sound mighty useful.

Especially the plugins make Songbird a viable alternative to other music players.

A look at the interface might confuse some users as it is packed with many buttons and functions. It can be divided into three parts. The menu toolbar, a sidebar that switches between different display modes and the main window that is divided in two rows as well.

The left sidebar contains the following modes:

• Simple Mode: Contains a listing of all music tracks as well as suggestions on the top which are computed after time.Suggestions include preferred, newest, rarely listen, other albums and similar artists.
• Files: A file browser that displays a directory tree with all music directories that have been added to the software. Filters, covers and a queue to create playlists are provided here as well.
• Tracks: Tracks sorted by genre using their mp3 tags. Filters, covers and the queue are offered in this menu as well.
• Albums: Displays either an album catalog that displays the album art or a albums table. The thumbnail size of the cover can be changed on the fly.
• Playlists: Contains an overview of all playlists on the system. Playlists are divided into new, best of, novelties and bookmarks. Again with options to save playlists.
• Display: Display the cover, lyrics and an animation while playing music. Covers and lyrics are automatically loaded from the Internet.
• Information: Displays information about the current band on Wikipedia.
• Config: Dozens of settings.
• Stats: Displays tracks per monht, size by directory, collection size by month and the genres

The software is packed with additional features that are interesting. It contains a so called DJ mode which makes it easy to create playlists based on factors like proportions (e.g. 20% heavy metal, 30% rock), transitions (Heavy –> Pop) or ambience (Party, Soft).

Additional features of interest:

• Mp3 tag editor (Ogg,ID3 V1/V2, WMA, Flac), Online (CDDB) retagging
• Finding duplicate files
• Configuration of web radios
• Last.fm information queries, scrobble
• CD Scanner
• Keyboard controls
• Alarm clock

Jajuk is an interesting alternative to music management programs like Media Monkey or iTunes.

Well it’s a shame then that many music jukebox applications don’t provide the functionality for people like you. If you’ve ever wanted to be able to browse your library by genre, sub genre, sub-sub-sub genre, music label and city of origin then I have found something in which you can do it.

Helium Music Manager unfortunately isn’t actually free, but it has a 30 day trial period so if it sounds good then I’d recommend giving it a shot.

Helium Music Manager provides a way to actually use every piece of data you have on an artist. You can have biographies, lyrics for every song, associated artists, see which bands individual musicians have been in and much more. Everything is analysed and collected into graphs and statistics, so you can see how much of your library was produced by EMI during the year 1970 if you so wished.

The biggest problem with Helium is just that it takes a lot of time to get your collection organized… there is no ‘batch tag’ option and for every artist you will need to go through and individually download and save data, lyrics, details, biography, reviews etc. However if you don’t mind then I would defiantly recommend this as a music organizer alternative.