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After (finally) uploading my music to Google Music I’ve been the service fairly extensively over the past couple of days. I’m using it mostly on my phone (old Nexus One) and while at school in the computer labs. At home I guess I’m a creature to habit and either default to iTunes or to ex.fm and soundcloud.

I won’t dig into the major pros and cons of Google Music as there are loads of blog posts on the subject (in particular vs the iCloud alternative) but I do want to focus the dearth of social integration options. I realize it’s in beta but the fact that there aren’t options to tweet/fbook/plus about the songs I’m listening to is unbelievable. Even a JV integration to Google Plus mirroring the functionality of Spotify + Facebook is not a ridiculous expectation. Of course I realize that I’m completely washing over the byzantine rules/regulations/demands of the music industry which are likely limiting Google’s hand here but if Google wants to lead from a technology perspective in this vertical it has to overcome the obstacles in its path.

In the future I expect/hope that we see the following from Google Music:

• Ability to share songs we’re listening to across social applications
• Ability to broadcast concerts/playlists both live and recorded (like a podcast) on Google Plus
• More recommendations based on listening habits + those of friends or songs that I “plus” across the web
• API integration for all of the awesome apps that are out there (e.g. ex.fm, last.fm, turntable.fm, pandora, etc.)

Anyone with a more nuanced understanding of the recording industry please feel free to comment.