I’m cleaning out my gmail folders this weekend, and went deep into the archive to 2011, when I got my invite to Google Music.
It’s funny, because I just (November) moved all of my music out of cloud and back to local-only. Amazon was the last straw, when I tried to play purchased music, and was forced to listen to it on shuffle with other songs not of my choosing.
Anyway… there was a time when Google (ahem, Youtube) Music was set to be a game-changer. Imagine if enshittification wasn’t a thing.
I’ll die on the hill that GPM was and still is the best music service I ever used. I don’t think I ever had a single recommendation that wasn’t on point for me. The service worked flawless and the app was easy to use. When we got the notice our hearts sank. Spotify doesn’t even compare .
Good call, recommendations have only gotten worse with subsequent iterations. I am glad they added gapless playback though, the first few versions had a tiny pause between songs which was hella obvious on stuff like Pink Floyd.
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Same! I still keep the icon on my phone to remind me of what we lost.
It was the best music service there was imo.
Now it’s buying my music and Jellyfinning it up.
Yes I too am “buying” music and adding it to my Emby and Music Assistant servers.
Why emby over jf?
Not sure; I’ve been using Plex for music. The app (and added features) are very nice to have (and don’t exist in Jellyfin).
I run a JF server as well as Plex to see where they are (from time to time) with their music app and it doesn’t have nearly the features PlexAmp has.
I have had Emby forever. Love it for videos, but it’s absolutely garbage for music. It’s just not built to support music, so it’s clunky and slow. I never used plex or jelly, but both built stand-alone music apps to address this exact problem, so I would assume they are both better. Emby was asked to build one, but they basically said no and also not anytime soon if they ever do decide to. They really didn’t seem to get what was so bad with what they already offered.
There are standalone music apps for emby though, I use symfonium on android which is simply awesome. It’s not that expensive either.
There is no official standalone music app for jellyfin. The regular apps do great with music though
Metro is pretty good, especially if you liked google music
Why not use Navidrome. It supports the SubSonic API so there’s a wider array of clients you can use, and it has a pretty good web UI.
Those are just players, right? Navidrome is also a subsonic server. Do you use something else?
I use Navidrome with Symfonium, love it! Thanks for letting me know about Tauon. I use Supersonic but Tauon seems will also fit my needs, don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before
Yeah. I use use Jellyfin. Symfonium is the best player I’ve found and it supports most everything.
Tauon is a weird one, but it’s great with Jellyfin. Play counts are a little wonky at times though.
(My response was in reaction to them asking why I’m using Jellyfin when there’s no need to change as I already have good players that support it.)
(Oh yeah missed that, thanks!)
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Yes Plexamp gang! I find the transition works for me too. I have a raspberry pi that just works with all my music on there. Paid the lifetime Plex fee too because I use it constantly.
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PlexAmp member reporting in.
terrible. I thought I would never need a copy of my music files again - They’re uploaded to Google so it’s all good.
When it crashed, it was an extreme hassle to download the several gigs, I ended up storing them on a phone temporarily, which then died and is likely not recoverable. I lost some rare and unique recordings like the music from my old band that I recorded.
Maintaining this would have been a pittance for Google.
EDIT: See replies below for the solution. Thanks Lemmy!
I thought all Google Music was transferred to YouTube Music. You might still have those files in your library.
Thanks! it turns out that it is all there!
I never bothered to setup a YT Music account, so I never realized that the uploaded music was still available. I know this is a very niche problem, but just in case anyone is searching and comes across this:
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Yes, Google Music uploads are saved in your YouTube Music files. You already have a Google account, so you can set it up with the same login to gain access to the files.
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On desktop, open “Library” on the left -> select “Uploads” tab at the top.
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Sort by “Album,” “Artist,” or “Song” to see the entire library.
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When searching, etc., it will default back to the YT Music streaming service. Manually select the “Uploads” tab after each operation.
It is also possible to download your music library (although not individual songs, etc.) from YT Music, although it is not obvious.
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Navigate to https://takeout.google.com/ while logged into the same Google account.
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Click on “Deselect all” (unless you wish to download ALL of your google related data.
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Select “YouTube and YouTube Music” at the bottom of the list
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Click “All YouTube data included,” then select “music-uploads” as well as “music-library-songs” (if you have any music acquired through Google)
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Follow the prompts to receive your files. You can choose to repeat this process as a periodic backup, or a one time download as a .zip (or set of .zip files). You can download them to your PC via email link, or you can have them directly transferred to another cloud service (Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive as of now)
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This process can take a while, but in my case I received the download links within a couple minutes (about 30 GB).
Good luck, and enjoy!
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When google music was consolidated into YouTube music it was a slightly worse experience, but mostly it somehow just ruined all of my playlists and made them unusable both on music and YouTube.
From what I can tell, the core issue with YouTube music is that it is restricted to the same API end points as default YouTube. Their api for playlist management just sucks and a lot of client side caching and workarounds are required to make it at all feel okay to use.
True random is hidden. They auto play videos and/or rape my data with downloads when I specifically tell it not to.
Slightly? I hated it and switched to Spotify
Me too. I would’ve probably used Google Play Music to the end of my days but the transition to Youtube Music was so good awful I cancelled and switched to Spotify within a couple of days.
I couldn’t justify the cost of Spotify when I’m still paying for YouTube premium (and have no plans to quit) and at the end of the day it still isn’t GPM
It was the best! GPM’s demise was an abomination.
Let’s all of us stop making the mistake of trusting big tech. They always make a good product you actually want then rugpull once you’re settled. YouTube music is passably okay but there’s a dozen bugs and issues that I’m still struggling with that didn’t exist in Google music
The UI/UX is absolute trash for uploaded music compared to play music.
The algorithms are worse too
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They decided which one is better for them.
Honest question as someone who didn’t get the chance to use Google Music and now uses YouTube Music: what are the downsides of YTM? What was Google Music better at?
I can’t speak specifically to YouTube Music. But Google Music allowed you to upload I think it was 50,000 of your own songs. And at the time it supported really good audio quality.
The app was also simple and clean. I don’t remember seeing all kinds of ads or suggestions for featured artists, podcasts, etc. Spotify seems a lot busier than what I remember with Google Music. That being said I mostly used Google Music to stream my personal library.
Yup, it was one of the worst “someone’s getting promo and the users are getting screwed” Google decisions.
Anyone remember this list?
https://www.reddit.com/r/googleplaymusic/comments/icmwdf/one_comprehensive_list_of_youtube_music/
Does anyone else remember when Gmail was invite only and you only got like 10 invites?
It’s how I snagged a “firstname.lastname” address. No numbers or anything! All the other people with my exact name out there can fuck off!
Yeah I snagged one too; but all the people with that name seem to have made variations of it, and when they give it out, either they forget their own email address or the person they give it to just mishears and simplifies to first name.lastname. Needless to say I receive a lot of junk intended for other people.
A buddy has guy123 and has had it for decades. It’s commonly used for fluff email entries and he enjoys seeing the spam people are up to lol.
And as a bonus you snagged firstnamelastname without realising.
This alone makes Gmail a better service than most providers. All of the similar but different address confusions avoided.
It really should be standard practice.
Oh I know.
There’s someone with a variation of my first name (think “Steven” versus “Steve”) who absolutely cannot get their shit sorted and gives out my address as theirs all over the place using “longerFirstNameLastname” but fucks it up and uses my address instead. I tried emailing them directly once letting them know, got accused of “hacking their google” and now I just delete some important looking emails like travel reservations and digital gift card redemption things for Xbox.
I have a first and last name email on Gmail and I had some dbag email me telling me if I didn’t hand over the email to him he was going to sign my account up for every spam service he could find also claimed he was going to hack my account but the brute force attempts and phishing emails didn’t work. This was a few years ago and I still get a ton of spam on that account and Google doesn’t have a solution for it so the account just sits there unused. I will take that email to my grave before I let some jackass in the internet get what he wants.
Oh yes, the enshittification of music streaming.
To be fair, most people seem to be fine with a “broadcast radio” type playback, where they want to hear both the music they already know/like, with other music that is at least somewhat similar to it.
A nontrivial number of people are more like you, who want this specific music to be played and nothing more. But that perspective, at least from what I’ve seen, is not held by the majority of users. So we get random trash thrown in with our personally curated lists of songs and albums.
Catering to the majority is fine, IMO, since that’s what will pay the bills. I get it. From a business perspective it makes sense. However, ignoring literally everyone else in the process is not what I would consider to be an acceptable policy. Certainly make the defaults conform to what appeals to the largest number of people, but allow the individual user to customize their experience.
Since companies won’t do that, those that want to listen to specific music generally get pushed into having a local music collection, so it behaves in a way that makes sense.
A nontrivial number of people are more like you, who want this specific music to be played and nothing more. But that perspective, at least from what I’ve seen, is not held by the majority of users. So we get random trash thrown in with our personally curated lists of songs and albums.
I’ve never had Spotify put anything into my curated playlists. They only play the music on the playlist.
And now almost all of Google’s “offerings” are enshittified to no end. 🤬
Best music platform ever, and probably forever with the way things are going.
It has literally everything, and it’s cheaper than buying cds. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
This and Zune were peak music.
I argue plexamp is getting close to this as well. Although I use Synfonium with Plex which is also a very smooth experience.
GPM is still untouched though. Even if was a rollercoaster waiting for a new client just to have YTM end everything we liked about it.
Where do you find the music to add to it? YouTube rips?
Generally Qobuz or Bandcamp if I want to buy the music
Been rocking a real mp3 player with a metal shell for years now. Nothing quite like having a dedicated device you curate yourself. The last time I used spotify was 2016
If youtube-dl/yt-dlp ever stops working im in trouble
