Google Music is just more than the music app on your Android phone or tablet – in the U.S., it’s a whole music storage and streaming service. You can upload music from your hard drive to Google’s servers, and then stream it from anywhere in the world via the web interface or the Google Music app on an Android device. That means you can access your whole music collection without taking up any of your phone’s limited storage space – definitely reason enough for me to be interested.
In this guide, we’ll be looking at how you can unlock this service for yourself, no matter where in the world that you live. It’ll only take a few minutes, so let’s get started.
1. Download and run Tor
Tor is a clever anonymity project that includes a customised version of Firefox. That’s good for our purposes, because it includes routing that will ensure that when we try to sign up for Google Music, our request appears to be coming from inside the U.S. If you were to try and sign up from a PC within the UK, Google would tell you you can’t use the service yet.
Windows, Mac and Linux users can download the program here, then launch it. You’ll soon see the window above; once it says “Connected to the Tor network!” then you’re in business.
You can be assigned an IP address from anywhere in the world, so check that you’ve got an American one by searching for “IP” at Duck Duck Go. This website will show your new IP address, which thanks to Tor, should be an American one.
As you can see below, we’ve been assigned an American IP address, so we’re clear to proceed. If not, then press “Stop Tor” then “Start Tor” in the Vadalia Control Panel (this opens when you launch Tor Browser). Refresh the Duck Duck Go search results in the Tor Browser until it informs you that you’ve got an American IP. Once you have, then move on to step 2.
2. Sign up for Google Music
Now that you’ve gotten an American IP address, just visit music.google.com in the Tor browser window. Sign into the same Google account that you use on your Android device. You’ll be asked to agree to some Terms of Service – try not to look too hard at the bit that says you aren’t meant to be running this service outside of the U.S.
Now, click on “Upload Music.” This will download a small music uploading utility to your PC. At this point, you should be free to disconnect from the Tor network and close the browser window.
Continue through the installation of the Music Manager as normal, remembering to sign in with the same Google account you use on the Google Music store and on your Android device.
Select the music that you’d like to upload to Google Music, whether it’s 1 song or 10,000, and let it get to work – it took me about 30 hours to upload my music collection, but this will vary based on your Internet upload speed and the size of your collection. Thankfully, the Music Manager will start with your computer and continue uploading until it has finished.
3. Download the Google Music APK file [for Gingerbread / Honeycomb devices]
Now that your music is stored in Google’s cloud-based Music servers, you’re ready to set up your Android device so that it can stream your collection from anywhere in the world.
My Samsung Galaxy Nexus came with Music version 4.0.9, but if you’re not running Ice Cream Sandwich and therefore you’re on an older version of the Music app, then you can simply download the Music 4.0.9 APK file online. If you search for “Google Music 4.0.9 APK” online you should be able to find it fairly easily and download it to your PC.
Once the download has been completed, connect your phone to your PC via USB and copy the APK file across into any folder on your device, remembering to note down its location, as you’ll need to find it later. Make sure that the “allow installation of non-Market apps” setting is enabled in on your device. This setting is typically labelled as ‘Unknown Sources’, and can be found in either the Applications or Security sub-menus within the Settings app.
Next, launch a file browser app such as Astro File Manager on your device and open the APK file that you just transferred, and it should install as an app on your device.
4. Play your music!
You can check how many songs are ready to play by using the Google Music website that you visited in step 2. It’s worth noting that now you’ve signed up for the service, you don’t need to use Tor to access the website – feel free to use your standard browser, and even uninstall Tor if you really like.
Once a few songs have been uploaded, you can begin to use Google Music as it was intended – by playing some tunes! You can stream the music through the well designed web player, or on your Android phone with Google Music 4.0.9 installed.
On Android, it’s worth noting that songs will be automatically stored when requested online. You can also manually download songs to your device ahead of time by selecting the “Make available offline” option. The settings menu is also worth a look, as you’ll be able to choose the quality of the stream and whether you want to be able to download or stream music when you’re using your mobile data connection. The latter option is useful, as you don’t want to be accidentally streaming hundreds of songs through your mobile data connection inadvertently!
That should be it – you’re now using Google Music outside of the U.S! While you’re not able to access the Google Play Music Store here without further wiggling, you do have a brilliant backup and streaming service for your music that’ll let you use that free space on your phone for other things.
If you have any questions about this guide or Google Music in general, feel free to tweet us or comment on this article via our Facebook Page. Thanks for reading, and farewell!
Vital Links:
Tor Download: https://www.torproject.org/index.html.en
DuckDuckGo IP Check: http://duckduckgo.com/
Google Music Signup: music.google.com
This article was written by William Judd. William writes for Mobile Fun, the UK’s leading online retailer of iPad 3 accessories including iPad 3 chargers and iPad 3 docks.