Comment by samfriedman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by samfriedman | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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