Uploading Your Music to Google Play

Once Music Manager is up and running and your special uploading folder is configured, it's time to get down to uploading some music! To upload your music to Google Play, you simply make sure that the album you are wanting to transport is in the folder you instructed Music Manager to use for this purpose. Perhaps you called your folder The Audio Transportation Station of Life, perhaps you decided to name it Google Music Uploads, or even just stuff. That was your call and we respect your choice.

Music Manager reminds new users from the start that the Play music application gives you enough room to upload 20,000 songs and that you're encouraged to fill up that space if you initially do not upload more than ten songs. As we said in our previous articles, we do not recommend uploading your entire collection at once! While we encourage you to use your own methods if they better suit your needs, a massive collection of poorly tagged music can be overwhelming to fix. Before your music even makes it into that upload folder, you might want to take a few considerations...

One useful aspect of the Google Play music application is that you aren't just limited to uploading MP3s. Music Manager will automatically covert FLAC, Ogg and  M4A files to 320kbps MP3s without even thinking about it (if Google's computers start actually thinking, that's another issue). If you are using the Windows version of the software, wma files are also supported. Many times if you are creating your own files, your music may not be automatically tagged correctly, and it will be more difficult to sort, search and view your albums.

The following image shows a small collection of poorly tagged albums uploaded to the Google Play music application.

Unfortunately, Unknown Artist in this case isn't the band from Seattle. If you upload an MP3 that doesn't have the artist specified, it will be sent to this particular special grouping. We only uploaded eight different albums and we already have work to do. We will go into detail about how to specifically fix certain problems later, but the to-do list currently entails:

1. The Devo album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! has been split up into two albums because some of the tracks have the Album Artist filled in, some don't. This is not immediately apparent.

2.  The double album Speakerboxx/The Love Below by the rap duo Outkast has also been split up into two separate albums. This could be a personal preference since each disc is an album in its own right, though it's still one entity.

3. Some tracks from two different albums are marked as Unknown Artist/Unknown Album. These MP3s do not have any tags at all.

4. The Close to Home album is listed twice. At first glance, this appears to be because one album properly uses uppercase letters for the band name and the title of the album, and the other doesn't. It is actually because the apostrophe is missing from the word 'Tussin on the second copy. The tags are not case-sensitive, and it is only an issue if you prefer consistency.

Although this is only four albums out of eight, if you took 20,000 songs and split them up into ten song albums, you would have 2000 individual albums to sort through and fix. You might even have 2000 or more albums already in your collection, and the thought of sorting through them one by one seems like it could take forever. You just want to upload it and get it over with, right? That's certainly one option, though we have a few other thoughts.

Our number one philosophy for uploading your music is to move your collection into the Google Play app with care. Moving it little by little allows you to prune and tag your collection as you go, a long-term investment that will make the application more useful to use in the long run. You have all the time in the world, so relax!

"Where should I start?" you ask ever so politely. This seems glaringly obvious and we apologize in advance for insulting your intelligence. We think that the first music that you should upload to Google Play are your favorite albums in the world, as they are probably already tagged and ready to go. That way, while your are sorting through the rest of your audio files, you'll have a bulletproof collection of the world's greatest music already begun.

Our second philosophy for uploading your music to Google Play is this: only upload music that you actually like. It doesn't have to be ranked high by Pitchfork or AllMusic, but it should at least be ranked somewhat high by you.

Look at it this way: perhaps when you are about to upload your prized copy of the hit 1999 album You Can't Stop the Bum Rush by the Canadian band Len, if the only song that you actually listen to is the hit "You Steal My Sunshine", not uploading the rest of the album will make room for better things and keep your personalized music collection more useful. The less music you upload that you don't care for, the more enjoyable your experience will be. If you are indifferent to the rest of the album but don't mind hearing it in its entirety every once in a while, go ahead and upload the entire thing. If you only need the single track, we'll help you decide what to do with it in our article on managing your single tracks on Google Play.

Keep your upload folder clean!

If you use a separate folder on your computer that is only used for uploading (e.g. a folder on your desktop), it's a good idea to delete its contents as soon as your music has uploaded. If you upload songs and then change the tags through the Google Play interface, there's a chance that Music Manager will get confused and upload the differently tagged, yet exact same music twice. This is one reason why it's a good idea to use a separate folder instead of uploading every album in your iTunes or My Music folder without regard, as it can result in duplicate uploads, and if you don't tend to that folder often, it can become quite unmanageable.

If you need further, perhaps more official assistance, check out the Google Play article Uploading songs to Google Play Using the Google Play Music Manager.