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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

...a solution that has long been found in the music business.

Perhaps you're fortunate that everything you want to listen to is on your preferred music streaming service, but what they offer is far from everything in the music industry's catalogue. Ask any classical music fan what they think of streaming services and you'll hear a tirade against the woeful offerings that streaming services make available.

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This is why I love Google Play Music, you can basically upload any kind of personally-acquired (legally or not) music to the service and it will seamlessly and transparently integrate with the platform itself and let you stream them wherever and whenever like any other.

They are stricter than Spotify with regional licenses unfortunately. I listen to a lot of Japanese artists that are on Spotify but not on GPM in Europe (but are there in Japan), I simply imported their albums and ripped them and uploaded them on the service and now they behave exactly the same. Not ideal, but still. For like 90% of the rest of the library (anecdotal experience at least) it's the same as Spotify, which is pretty great.

DISCLAIMER: I work at Google, but I've been using GPM long before that. These are my opinions and not those of my employer, yadda yadda.

I love Google Play Music for exactly this reason: I have 20k songs uploaded and counting. No other service is offering anything close. Sadly the team seems to have recently scaled back on the "Your library" features in favor of radio (where they can insert ads), neutering the Instant Mix feature, removing the ability to make a "Feeling Lucky" mix of my uploaded music, and re-jiggering the interface to push Radio harder.

The thing is, the paid tier of GPM is really only for on-demand streaming of the music catalogue and removing ads in the radio. As an upload-only user, I really see no reason to pay money for a service that I am fully enjoying for free. If Google were to add back (and continue developing) the removed My Library features and decide to make a payment tier for use-cases like mine, I'd happily subscribe. Their focus on "your library anywhere, with extra features" is something that really stands out. I'd hate to see GPM turn into just another stream-what's-licensed service.

> I love Google Play Music for exactly this reason: I have 20k songs uploaded and counting. No other service is offering anything close.

Actually Apple Music offers exactly this. There might be other reasons you'd prefer not to use it, which is fine, but in terms of offering they're actually quite similar.

Except Apple will actually allow you to upload more songs than Google Music, up to 100,000.

It's still silly to upload all the music I have that they don't when they probably do already store it for someone else. Just checksum my files to ~prove that I have it. I'm sure no one cares enough about it to generate hash collisions for MP3s. Do they really store unique copies of every mp3 for ever user? That seems insanely inefficient, and yet I wouldn't be surprised if their contracts with the music industry stipulated that they couldn't share files between users.

Yep, that would be incredibly ineffecient, so they use a smarter approach - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205919#existing

I actually wasn't aware, thanks. I've been on GPM for years, but it might be time to get a refreshed view of the competition as well.

I was on Google Play Music from the beginning, and only left when they cancelled my early access plan without asking me and refused to reinstate it. Apple Music has leapfrogged them in every way, and Google Music has only regressed since launch, especially in terms of UX.

I did really like Google Play Music, and allowing the local library sync as a free draw was a really smart move. But the sour taste they left in my mouth by killing my discount plan and ruining the UX meant I looked at other options. Signed up for Apple Music day one and it has improved leaps and bounds since then.

It's very clearly a huge priority for Apple, and they aren't resting on it.

I keep hearing that there may be problems with Apple Music, such as replacing local files. Having quite a lot of content which is ripped from vinyl I'm hesitant to try it. Have you had any difficulties with it?

I've never had it replace local files. I would say you should back up your music collection like anything else in case something happens, but as long as the files are there locally I see no reason why it would replace them.

Maybe it wants to "move" everything to your local library and messes it up / puts it into some idiotic inaccessible format like Photos. Then you can "export" them as "raw" which takes hours and will crash / just stop a bit of the way in. I've had bad luck with the photos app with just ~10k photos. I still miss Aperture.

Thanks. Backups are, of course, essential, but it would be a bit of a pain trying to identify and clean up any substitutions.

If GPM had a Linux client, I would consider switching to it.

https://www.googleplaymusicdesktopplayer.com/

works on linux and there's also an unofficial API

https://unofficial-google-music-api.readthedocs.io/en/latest...

I make playlists almost daily for work and I use the API to manage them, dedupe, delete old ones, and what not. Super convenient.

But the web UX has gone to crap. There was an update a few months ago that really killed its performance and broke the playlist sorting. They need to eat some of their dogfood.

Sure, but Spotify has a Linux client, so I'd rather they get my money.

My complaint is that I can't use GPM family with a custom domain, boo.

I used to use Google Play Music, and it was very nice. But for anyone who has a reaaaaalllly big library I might suggest something like Ampache (http://ampache.org/).

It's totally open source, has a relatively decent web player, allows you to stream your music anywhere, allows you to create accounts for others to have access to your music, can connect with Plex/subsonic to work with other devices/clients. I use DSub on my phone, and can sync music offline (like GPlay Music). Only downsides really is that it requires a web server and the initial import can take some time if your library is very large.

There are many great options for those with large personal digital libraries.

Describe yourself:

"I'll never let go of my Squeezebox and/or enjoy living in the past and/or need it to run on Windows" https://github.com/Logitech/slimserver

"I'm a sysadmin with a Roku SoundBridge" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_Media_Server is another, specifically for Roku Soundbridge and iTunes streaming protocols.

"I'm running FreeNAS and just want to use a plugin" Subsonic is another http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp . Can also do Shoutcast streaming.

"I know what RMAF stands for and/or like messing with SBCs and/or spending $10k on audio equipment" http://www.runeaudio.com

"I run Arch with a tiling wm" Lastly are the mpd family of servers and clients. These are for the hardcore nerds who love recompiling ffmpeg from source. Servers: https://www.musicpd.org // https://www.mopidy.com

Clients: https://www.musicpd.org/clients/ // https://docs.mopidy.com/en/latest/clients/mpd/ // http://www.runeaudio.com/clients/

This looks cool. I've been using Plex for the same features but performance has gotten sluggish on the VM it runs on.

thanks for sharing this, looks awesome!

Amazon does the same thing. Although their "free" storage tier is a bit anemic, and they want an extra couple bucks a month for a generous tier (since they're a couple bucks cheaper with a Prime membership, that would basically take you back to square one). However, their differentiator is that everybody gets unlimited storage for content purchased from Amazon.

I keep hearing about how nimble and agile Spotify is, and how their tech stack and team structure lets them add features quickly. I wonder why they haven't offered upload storage yet, and whether that's coming?

I bought a Synology NAS, and it does this beautifully, with no privacy issues, or risks of music execs pulling my library.

Apple Music is the same. The first time you add it will apply their (shit) deduping, but if you delete and add your files again it will consider your version the "real" ones and upload them to the cloud

I use Google Play Books for exactly this same reason. Yeah, I can buy books from anyone, but there are plenty of things that are either out of copyright that I want to read (so, Project Gutenberg), or I own a physical copy and want digital (and don't want to pay again for simply the format change), or similar, and having everything in one place easily makes it so Google Play Books is the only place I will buy DRMed ebooks.

This feature should be talked about more. I love being able to supplement the service's catalog with music I own.

I love stuff from Japan as well, and from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of Japanese music on the US Apple Music, and it’s also fairly easy to create a Japanese iTunes account to get a free 3 month trial of the JP Apple Music store.

Note: Groove Music does the same thing. You can upload anything you want to your OneDrive account and it will be seamless in the app. No Groove payment required at all.

Deezer also supports MP3 uploads. Works well, but their playlist-centric interface makes impossible navigate through your MP3 library by artist or album.

You don't need "everything" but you need enough. If you subscribe to e.g Spotify you initially get surprised by some things not being in their library. However the library is so large and the use of a single service so convenient that most people can simply accept what's there. After the initial disappointment, any further disappointment is nearly zero so long as you keep all your discovery of new music within Spotify - because you'll never discover what isn't there.

Classical is a bit special, but hopefully efforts like the internet archive can help bring at least a lot of the royalty free music to streaming.

I'd be perfectly happy with a streaming service aggregating the current top 10 services for tv/movies, and I assume 90% of customers would. It seems reasonable to make a product that caters to "most" rather the all customers, just like Spotify.

No. I am a huge music nerd. It's my life's passion. I need everything. If it is not everything, it's not enough.

In the past, technically savvy music nerds like me had options. LPs and CDs as a distribution format offered true permanence. Vinyl when cared for properly usually outlives the owner. CDs can be ripped and archived with perfect 1:1 accuracy.

These formats don't disappear from my record shelves at the whim of an executive or a change to a silly end user license agreement. They're mine forever, for me to cherish and learn from for as long as I want.

Until the music industry offers this type of solution for the digital music ecosystem, they will not be adequately serving music's most dedicated and passionate patrons.

Bandcamp is the only service that comes close to delivering the proper solution. But they are so uncompromising in their ideals that the 'industry' will not work with them. It's too bad, because they and DistroKid are the only two online music industry services I have ever seen that are genuinely interested in furthering the lives of their users.

Not totally similar but I also think that BeatPort is pretty great, especially if you're a DJ.

> In the past

LPs and CDs still exist.

Forgive my bluntness, but this is a disingenuous comment. LPs and CDs may still exist, but they are obviously not a supported distribution format by the music industry anymore - with the country of Japan being the only glaring exception.

Your examples aren't wrong. Spotify is "good enough" for most people.

"so long as you keep all your discovery of new music within Spotify - because you'll never discover what isn't there."

This is exactly the reason we have arguments about the importance of net neutrality - which your underlying point is arguing directly against. Not sure if that was intentional or not - but the music industry is a really bad measuring stick of success in this area.

To contrast to Spotify - I'm sure Disney would be fine with it if everyone watched what they were hosting on their network exclusively and ignored the content on other platforms.

On a side note: Isn't this basically what Disney Life is already? Did I miss something?

I'm on one hand very much a proponent of net neutrality but I'm also lazy and was hoping competition would result in the best user experience and not silos.

I wasn't trying to make an argument either way on what's good/bad with Spotify (or any service large enough to be used as an only provider) but my feeling of missing out on something is something I try to avoid more than actually missing out on something (if that makes any sense). A kind of loss aversion I suppose. Bryter to have less and not know, than have more and see what you are missing.

Well, in that case, whatever you do, don't use SoulSeek and browse the libraries of others: http://www.slsknet.org/news/

I understand that you like to discover new music. But for me it's the other way around, I like to discover old stuff. Basically, things that I should I've listened at 30 years ago. Moreover, in that old stuff, it's always things that I've missed at that time, so most of the time, it's very niche stuff (old EBM tracks, obscure new wave bands, etc.); if it was not niche, then I wouldn't have missed it. So for me, the current services are not broad enough... Because I'm interested in the 1% that didn't make it... YouTube remains, for me, the best option (because many people upload things without looking at rights issues and because old-and-niche music is not worth protecting)

Torrent sites are also serving this need, but the barriers to entry are high. There's not many (or any) distribution channels for some of this stuff today. If you're looking for some old screamo that was only released in small numbers on vinyl, good luck finding it. That's an extreme example, but really we're talking about preserving art here. Some art has millions of prints, some was one-time performance art. The music industry will only sell you a very small % of what has been created.

FWIW, I have the same issue trying to find new experimental EDM. I find indieshuffle provides a much better selection of more out-there songs, at the cost of having a much less mature interface.

Grooveshark was a lot better than Spotify, both in functionality and in offering, but alas...

Youtube is probably the most complete but (1) I don't want to waste bandwidth on downloading the video every time I try to listen to music and (2) it's missing the discovery component that dedicated music services have.

As a solution to (1) you can use youtube-dl https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

It supports downloading only the audio.

But why would you download a (probably illegal) rip that is poor quality, when the act of downloading and keeping the rip is probably illegal in itself (not exactly sure about that) from a platform that is notoriously unsuitable for music when you could just download high-quality release from a music tracker specially optimised for this use case?

I mean, if you are ok with doing something (probably) illegal, why not get the best experience out of it?

In my case, because I know youtube and youtube-dl, and I haven't noticed the sound quality being bad, and I don't even know what a music tracker is.

I agree with your sentiments, but to play devil's advocate grabbing music from youtube protects you from DMCA notices from your ISP, is always available (no having to wait for seeds/peers on more obscure music), and is much safer (for an average person) where content on public trackers has some risk of containing malware/virus/etc.

Because I only listen to vaporwave that was pulled from SoundCloud.

Open source command line clients for specific streaming services inherit the catalog issues, but FYI:

Pandora - https://github.com/PromyLOPh/pianobar

Spotify - https://github.com/plietar/librespot

You could also use Atraci which streams off YouTube:

https://github.com/Atraci/Atraci

Haven't seen this one before. That's an interesting idea. I might try this out.

I believe it downloads the whole video, then extract the sound. At least you're downloading only once, but one of the points of streaming music is not keeping the music on your disk at all.

Plus, it's pretty illegal if I'm not mistaken!

Plus, sound quality on youtube isn't very good

From what I understand, the audio and video are simply different streams that you can selectively download from the youtube servers. So it is entirely possible to only download the audio, I've done it many times with youtube-dl.

Thanks for mentioning it, I love that tool (even got this on my phone in a Debian subsystem). Still, it's not suitable as a replacement for Spotify: the discovery element is too useful :/

I was going to make some comment about the corollary being that I don't care that old, B-rate, black-and-white films wouldn't be on the service, but then I remembered that there are some surprising gaps in the Google Play library. Don Henley and Bob Seeger are notably absent. As a child of the 80's, I find this sad, and I think most everyone would be disappointed to find that Hotel California is not available on the service. Thank goodness they finally added Zep.

Until pretty recently, Bob Seger's music wasn't available on any streaming outlet. Now some of it's available on Spotify and Apple Music, but not enough. Still can't listen to "Turn the Page".

I know that spotify/Apple Music are lacking in certain areas, however pretty much all "mainstream" music from the last 40(?) years is available on both platforms. Comparing that to Netflix, where searching for "top tv shows of the 1990's" will give you a list, of which less than 30% are available on netflix here. Worse still, they're available in other countries.

Have a look at idagio.com it is a hand curated streaming service for classical music. I got the early bird offer for 5€ a month which is incredible! Especially because they have lossless quality streaming!

https://www.idagio.com/geoblocked

Pity. This is a good demonstration though of the value lost to dysfunctional copyright laws.

Problem with streaming services like Spotify is also that, while you're paying and therefore fulfilling the legal aspect of copyright, my favourite artists see a negligible amount of that money, it's a shit deal for them, and if I look at it in honest I don't particularly feel a lot better about it vs pirating mp3s and buying the occasional album.

...and jazz. I'd pay €50/month without blinking for the entire ECM catalog for example.

For music lovers torrents exist for casual listeners streaming services are a better fit because you do not have to know what you want.

Classical music fans are more music lovers than casual stream listeners

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