Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulcole | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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?

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com