Ask HN: Google Play Music Alternative? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Google Play Music Alternative?

22 pointsmattlondon18 comments

What are good alternatives to Google Play Music?

While YouTube Music is more or less ok as a replacement, I don't like the dark-patterns they're using to try and lure/confuse you into a subscription for YouTube rather than just listening to your music like you used to be able to.

What good alternatives exist that:

- let me upload my own music collection

- stream from a browser & a native android app

- ideally do not have a subscription

- Optional: legitimate music purchases

I don't mind self-hosting if it comes to that?

Thanks!

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Plex sounds like it could be a solid alternative if you can self-host a media server (on a NAS or similar).

You can stream from your web browser, a mobile app or whatever and it supports Chromecast so you can stream to other devices if you want to.

They also have a dedicated Music app called Plexamp which has clients for Android, iOS, Mac, Linux & Windows

https://plexamp.com/

plexamp is so much better than their standard media app

https://github.com/sentriz/gonic is a very lightweight implementation of Subsonic (so you can use any Subsonic client with it, ie. there are native and browser apps). I use it with DSub on Android.

There's still https://bandcamp.com/ for buying music, but there are many artists I can no longer buy mp3's from now that Google Play Music is gone :-/

> but there are many artists I can no longer buy

this is the most frustrating part of the whole ordeal, many indie artists had their digital albums on GPM and youtube music is not a replacement because you can't buy albums on it.

on the other hand bandcamp is awesome, I wish more artists would use it.

Depending on your hardware, your NAS software might be a good replacement. Pretty much all of them offer decent music apps. (e.g. Synology DS Audio).

+1 for Synology DS Audio. I've been using it for the last 2+ years and it works great.

https://www.ibroadcast.com is a real dark horse. Fills the same role that Google Play music did for me - uploaded library with streaming and cached offline playback.

Upload your own collection, they've fairly powerful web and android apps. Various upload clients

Currently free - they promise a free plan going forward.

Been around for years, I don't use it as I've been waiting for them to deliver some concrete plan for monetisation before committing to the upload, but I've been following the project.

I was using Google Play Music only for my own music and moved recently to Google Drive which just syncs my audio folder on every device. I use https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cloudbeats on my android phone and Rhythmbox (since I just sync plain mp3-files) on my notebook.

I wrote one for myself: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.ashishb.an... it plays both local files as well files from Google Drive (without requiring access to full Google Drive)

AFAIK Itunes Match is still around if you do not want a regular streaming service. But Apple Music also includes the same functionality.

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

You can upload your own stuff but it is subscription based, of course. Playing should work through the Apple Music app for Android.

I use iTunes match with a circa 200GB collection (and then Apple music stuff on top). Can't remember the details of the extra subscription for match, but after the first upload pass it works really well.

Everything is automatically synced between all devices. Also helps algo find additional recommendations in regular Apple music.

I also use Apple Music on Android. Caching is woeful sometimes, but it does the job for now.

For Linux, can use https://music.apple.com

Seems to be getting better (has been quite buggy up to now).

I've been umm-ing and ahh-ing about going self hosted for a while, but I can't find anything that gives me control over my library and a massive repertoire of good tunes.

The latter is probably the biggest selling point for me sticking with apple for now.

Recently switched to Jellyfin+Gelli Android app. Great experience so far, also the web interface is nice to use on both mobile and desktop.

https://jellyfin.org/ https://github.com/dkanada/gelli

Apple Music lets you upload any personal music and stream/re download it alongside normal offerings.

Works perfectly through music.apple.com and an oddly good native Android app.

Un ideally it requires a subscription, though there’s a generous three month free trial. I also don’t think there’s a self hosting option.

Things that fit this and I've tried out lately:

- Synology DS Audio (comes with Synology NASes)

- Plex Media Server

- Emby Media Server

They all have decent mobile apps, can stream music directly from your own server. Plex/Emby probably have a bit better apps with Android Auto support and whatnot.

No purchases unfortunately.

https://funkwhale.audio/

It's self-hosted.

The website seems down at the moment though.

Anything that uses the mpd protocol, including mpd itself, can do all of those things except sell you new music.

I've switched from GPM to Tidal+Roon. So far so good.

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