Ubuntu One Music
by Toni McQuilken
May 9, 2011 4:00 PM –
Install
Ubuntu One Music makes the most of your music, try it now free for 30 days*. Wirelessly stream your entire music collection from your Ubuntu One personal cloud to your Android device anywhere in the world. You can cache files locally for offline listening and manage your playlists on the fly. Ubuntu One Music supports MP3s, Non-DRM iTunes songs and Ogg Vorbis formats and Last.fm Scrobbling. A free Ubuntu One account is needed, don’t have one? Get started here: https://one.ubuntu.com/plans/ *Ubuntu One Music free trial lasts for 30 days thereafter requires a subscription.
Price: Free for 30 Days, $3.99/month or $39.99/year
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Streaming your music collection from your mobile device without having to save it to the SD card
Cons
- Setting up an account is a pain
- You can’t use the app without an account
- You have to provide a credit card to try the app free, although they say you can cancel within the 30 day free trial and you won’t be charged
- There’s only 2GB of storage unless you pay to upgrade
The new mobile interface for Ubuntu One’s streaming service.
Features:
I really like the concept behind Ubuntu One’s service, but the way it’s executed make it difficult to enjoy. First, while the site is free to upload and stream from a computer, to use the mobile client, you have to pay a monthly or yearly fee. They offer a 30 day free trial, but to get the free trail requires a credit card. They say if you cancel within the 30 days your card won’t be charged, but I personally don’t like having to remember to do that. I would rather see access without a credit card, that’s cut off in 30 days unless you decide to pay for it. You can’t even get into the app to check out the feature set without giving your credit card, as you’ll get an error code without it.
Once you are in the app, you have access to stream any music you’ve uploaded, which is up to 2GB. To get more storage space is an additional $2.99/month or $29.99/year for every 20GB pack.
I have to say, after my initial review, I decided to go back in and give it another shot, and honestly, it just gets worse. Once I finally had an account set up and working, I couldn’t get any files to sync to it. It took me about 20 minutes to find and then install the Windows client, only to discover it only syncs files, not music. And to sync music, I would have to upload every file individually via the Web dashboard.
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Ubuntu One Main
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Ubuntu One Playing Music Tracks
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Ubuntu One List of Music Tracks
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Ubuntu One Settings
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Ubuntu One Error
Usefulness:
Great for uploading and accessing your music from any device.
Ease of Use:
Not very easy. It took me 20 minutes to get through the account creation page only to discover I really couldn’t do anything with it unless I give them a credit card.
Frequently Used:
Every day if you like to listen to music.
Interface:
Easy to use once you get in. It’s pretty basic – the real meat is in the cloud behind the app.
AndroidTapp.com Rating
(1.5 out of 5)
Should you Download Ubuntu One Music? Honestly, no. It’s a good concept, but for what it is, they’re asking way too much. If you actually wanted to, realistically, have your whole collection on there for streaming, you could be looking at $70-$100 per year on the yearly plan. I don’t begrudge them wanting to charge for some things, like extra storage, but charging that much just to access it on a phone when all the real functionality is in the cloud, is a big turn-off. And to not even allow me to test the mobile site without giving them a credit card they’ll charge if I don’t remember to cancel it in 30 days is a tactic I’ve never been a fan of. Give me a key that expires, then I’ll decide at the end of the trial if I want to pay you. On top of that, the process of trying to set it up and make it work had me ready to throw both my computer and phone through a window.