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Comment by ehsankia | Hacker News Reader

Why does Google Play Music never come up in any of these discussions? I've found Google's recommendation engine to be far beyond competitors. They also allow uploading your own library which no other service out there does. Plus, you get Youtube Red for free with GPM, which is great value. They have the same family plan, and 320kbps.

What is it lacking that no one ever considers it?

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I pay for ad-free YouTube Red and got Google Play Music for free, IMO best value music subscription bundle available.

iTunes Match allows you to upload your own library and stream it from every device, for a yearly fee

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204146

> They also allow uploading your own library which no other service out there does.

Others have mentioned iTunes Match, but they haven't mentioned that Apple Music itself includes iTunes Match. So this claim is very much incorrect.

> Apple Music itself includes iTunes Match

Apple Music doesn't include iTunes Match, they're complementary: while Apple Music does perform matches like iTunes Match, iTunes Match gives you DRM-free AAC 256 as downloads while Apple Music matches are DRM-ized.

This means that if you use source files to match with Apple Music then delete the sources, you lost them, whereas with iTunes Match you would have sort of "converted" them.

You can see the difference by adding the "Kind" column in the "Songs" view of iTunes.

I've never used iTunes match, but it sounds like you are "matching" your music signature which music that is already on Apple Music. Can you upload brand new songs that are not on the system with it? This is a major reason why I went with GPM, a significant number of the music in my library was not on any streaming service, and back then, it was the only way to get those albums streamed for me.

Yup! It does try to match with stuff it already knows, but things which aren't on the service it'll upload.

When I tried it for the free month, it was really unresponsive at times. The UI wasn't even that terrible, it was just it's responsiveness. One example being that it would hang almost every time I opened it while it was playing something, so I would have to wait 10 sec before I could do what I wanted to do. Spotify's, and even Apple Music's apps are much better, at least on iOS. It was cool that I was able to upload a lot of my video game music that isn't up for streaming anywhere, and YouTube Red was nice as I do watch a lot of YouTube content, but I had to leave because of the app.

Now I use Spotify for most of my music and GPM for uploaded stuff, because that part is actually free, surprisingly.

Having used Apple and Spotify I really like what Google is doing. They bought Songza a few years ago and their station recommended engine is so much better. You pick from moods, time of day, feelings, intensity, location, etc. Also Chromecast is much nicer to use than than Bluetooth based solutions.

lack of playlist folders is the main thing that made me move back to spotify. I was using Google music for a year or two and made maybe 80 or so playlist before it got to much to handle. I had way more playlists on spotify and I would have moved them over to Google if there was a way of organising them

most of the new music i find these days is on discover weekly so I don't have as much of a need to upload tracks. it is really odd that none of the other services have added that feature yet. talk about being behind! its been 7 years

another thing that bugged me about Google music is the albums and singles being mixed up and also the album view not showing the order by year. it seems to be just random.

but apart from that its pretty decent and it is odd that its not mentioned as much as the others

I'm not a heavy playlist user but I can understand the pain. Does Spotify allow nested playlist under folders? That's a pretty neat design.

The album listing is definitely a big issue. I don't mind EPs being mixed, but singles should really be separated.

I'm curious to see how the merge with Youtube Music goes and if that leads to better UI.

I use apple match (not apple music), which allows uploads of your own music to play anywhere.

I'm not sure why google doesn't get much mention, neither does napster (formally rhapsody) which a friend uses and likes. or amazon music for that matter..

> They also allow uploading your own library which no other service out there does.

For the overwhelming majority of customers this is a non-feature.

Consider anyone under the age of say 20-25 today. How many will ever have a "real" mp3?

That's fair, but it's still not a negative. I'm curious what it lacks that makes everyone go towards other services. My point is that it has everything, and more.

Poor branding. Music is cool and fun. Spotify and Apple are cool and fun. Google is utilitarian.

Also, adding features that don't add value (e.g. upload files) isn't a positive.

Funny. The upload feature is THE reason I use Google Music. I can upload my library of independent Brazilian music that isn't in any catalog.

Personally, this is exactly why Google Play is the only option for me. I would gladly move back to Spotify should they offer that feature.

Spotify has (or had, I haven't used it in years) a similar feature called Local Files. You have to be on the same network as the computer to sync the files, and there's little metadata on them, but you should still be able to comingle local and Spotify music. It's not quite the same, but it's something.

It's definitely nowhere near the same. My music is at home, and the whole reason started using a music subscription is exactly to listen to it at work or at the gym. If I was home, there are dozens of free services that stream your music locally.

It's pretty close. If you use the download feature on a playlist that contains local files while in the same network, the file is copied to the device. So you'd have it at the gym or at work, you just need to make sure you've downloaded it to the device first.

It's basically music upload without the upload (and therefore always-available nature).

Great! But you can understand that you’re in a tiny minority and why Spotify won’t/shouldn’t add this feature, right?

I pay for YouTube red and I still use Spotify. Originally it was because I didn’t like google music’s UI and they didn’t have native applications.

I’m not sure if it’s improved since then.

> I've found Google's recommendation engine to be far beyond competitors.

I've compared all, and no service comes close to Spotify's discovery engine.

Why?

I agree. For my tastes (hard rock and metal, mostly out of the mainstream), the automatic playlists have been absolutely stellar.

I've curious, when was that? I know that Google's engine has improved quite a bit over the years. Considering it's 7 years old, I'm sure it has changed quite a bit since the early days.

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