Amazon’s Music Storage service will remove MP3 files on April 30th | Hacker News Reader

Amazon’s Music Storage service will remove MP3 files on April 30th

theverge.com

59 pointssupermdguy18 comments

Ugh, this was a useful feature. Basically, I want the “All Music, When I Want It” service. Since no corporation will ever have licenses for everything I want to listen to, let me upload it and stream it back. Losslessly please—we can argue if I or anyone else can hear the difference, but I’d still pay for it.

Anyone have a favorite open source self-hosted music option with good mobile clients?

I use subsonic (now closed source), but there are several alternatives based on it that are open source (e.g. airsonic).

On my phone I use the dsub app which is just fantastic IMO. Should work with any server that supports the subsonic api.

There's also ampache which I hear is good but I've never tried it.

I made one for myself! It's not the most mature solution or the most fully-featured but I think it's good at what it does:

https://github.com/agersant/polaris

Android client: https://github.com/agersant/polaris-android

It's not open-source, but you can upload your own music to Google Play Music without any subscription.

Kodi or plex?

(Recommend kodi as it's opensource and I think plex requires you to pay on mobile.)

What does "save your music to the cloud" mean? Isn't my data already in their cloud? I would recommend downloading your music first before pushing that button.

The idea was that you could upload your non-Amazon-purchased music to their service.

Right, so what changes when I push the button?

Edit: ok I found the difference on this page: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ref_=dm... Basically if you don't push the button, they will delete your files. If you had a paid storage plan, they will keep your original files somewhere, but they won't be accessible from your music library. If you push the button, you can continue to play and download your music like normal, but you still can't upload any more.

When you push the button, you get a backup of what's in your system.

Amazon is dropping that backup.

Not everything on Amazon Music can be streamed, and some stuff they just simply don't have in their online library at all. The locker was nice because I had uploaded over a thousand songs that I had from my CD library that Amazon doesn't offer via Amazon Music.

Pushing the button means you will have a copy of those songs until sometime in 2019.

When I log in to view my subscription, I get this notice:

  "Your music storage subscription which enables you to import up 250,000 songs will expire on April 8, 2018

  After this date you will not be able to renew your subscription or upload more songs. In order to continue to play and download your uploaded songs after your subscription expires, select "Keep my songs." Otherwise, these songs will removed from your library. Amazon music digital purchases will remain securely stored for playback and download."

Pretty sure you can do the same thing with iTunes or Google Play Music, no? I've easily got around 50k songs uploaded to GPM for that purpose. It was useful to be able to stream my full library when I was working on a Chromebook with puny internal memory.

Used to be able to do it on Amazon and Microsoft Groove too. It's getting harder to find a service that integrates my music with the stuff in their streaming catalog. After iTunes Match trashed my music library a couple years ago I don't trust them anymore, so that just leaves Google at this point. How long until they stop offering this option?

If they stop this option, I'm moving off of it ASAP. It's the only feature keeping me on there.

Used to be able to do it with Microsoft Groove via OneDrive, I moved to Amazon when MS cancelled that. I generally avoid Google and Apple products.

I'll probably end up reviving a Plex server and setting that up, it was just nice to be able to mix streaming services with owned music in a transparent manner.

Music is one of the few remaining areas of mass media where I think having the file on your drive is a must. I’ll buy from places that don’t let me download, and then pirate a copy to actually own. I want to support the artists, but get real, if I bought it I want to own it.

Yeah I can't see myself ever not having local copies of my music. Streaming services just don't cut it. E.g as a music enthusiast I'll often have specific releases/masters of albums etc...

I have my music library backed up on several drives and I've got a subsonic server setup so I can have access to it from anywhere. Best of both worlds imo.

Ah, thanks! I just had a look at Subsonic and it's right up my alley.

I'm slowly transitioning from Spotify to a local file setup and Subsonic looks like the missing piece.

I was considering dropping on a Plex membership but this seems way cheaper and just as decent.

Oh, wow - thanks for the heads-up on subsonic. that looks awesome!

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