I get a lot of music from friends via email and it’s a huge pain to have to download them from Yahoo Mail, save them on my computer, then launch a player to hear them. I heard that Google’s Gmail service has a better solution. Do they, and if so, how does that work?
Great question: I didn’t realize that Gmail had the ability to play audio files within the Gmail system itself, but your question provoked some investigation on my part and, well, you’re absolutely right!
To show you how it works I’ve emailed myself a music file, Django Reinhardt’s splendid rendition of Limehouse Blues as an Mp3 file. When I view the message in Gmail, here’s how it looks:
Normally, with an attachment you see “View” or “View as HTML” and “Download” as the two options adjacent to an attached item, but here you can see that we have a cheery little music file icon and “Play” shows up.
Since I rarely miss a chance to listen to Django, I’ll click on “Play” and a new window pops open:
Simple, elegant, and it works like a charm. So your suspicion is indeed correct, Gmail does a splendid job of handling Mp3 files, and my kudos to Google for this unsung additional feature to an already state-of-the-art web-based email system.
Rock on!
i would like alot of music
Hey, when I go to down load my gmail mp3’s…it shows up as a blank page with the song title below it and won’t play outside of the gmail player…is there something i need to download to get my files to work…I’ve check with others who have downloaded the same files and no one else seems to be having this problem.
@anonymous: There are a lot of Stylish scripts for Firefox that can change the interface. Some are complete new themes while others are small tweaks. I personally like the interface (although I prefer using a desktop client, KMail, primarily), but check them out:
http://userstyles.org/styles/search/gmail
And Gmail is pretty good at providing useful features for free. This isn’t quite as useful, but it is nice to have. In fact, GMail makes it easy to read a lot of attachments from inside the interface, which can be incredibly useful when you’re not on your PC.
Marc, have you ever used gmail? The storage currently stands at about 7 GB. A 5MB attachment isn’t much these days
Just what we need 5 meg attachments cluttering up our email.
definitely another useless function from google. spice up the interface first.
Your knowledge is boundless!!
Does it matter where the file came from in the first place? (I’m thinking iTunes specifically)