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Comment by Morgawr | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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