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Comment by standardUser | Hacker News Reader

Google Play was ideal because I could upload any of my own music and it was part of my library, accessible anywhere in the world.

Does any service like that still exist? I'm stuck with Spotify, which lacks dozens and dozens of albums that are important to me, and it won't let me upload them myself.

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Spotify actually lets you do that, so you're in luck. Add local files on your desktop to a playlist, download the playlist on your mobile device, done. I'm using the feature, it works. Though it does not work with my "Spotify remote play" (or whatever they're calling it) kitchen radio.

The feature is so niche, I half expect them to drop it without a word in any given update.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Play-quot-local-fil...

Hi,

I was trying to explain that in the blog post too, in Apple Music your own added songs are uploaded and act as any other streaming song and I think it’s pretty amazing, also the fact that your song now has all the inherited features like Siri/Spotlight search!

I don't use Apple music myself, but I've heard that it doesn't actually use your songs but uses song name matching which sometimes gives you censored versions of explicit songs. Is this true?

I remember when I used Google Play Music and it kept the AOL sound in "my" copy of a certain Tatu song, so that was definitely streaming the uploaded song.

Well, I'm pretty sure GPM did some level of acoustic matching nonsense to optimise storage or bandwidth, because it changed a bunch of songs that I'd uploaded into a different language version of song.

It does that if it can match them, and uploads them if it can't. Downloads on other devices might be 256 kbps AAC either way, so not a backup service.

You cannot officially force an upload, but I would expect there to be some kind of hack for it. If I remember correctly, calling the album "Red Album (sorejan's Version)" actually does the trick.

I haven't tried this myself, but from what I read about it, it's basically a manual sync you have to do which isn't what he was asking about. GPM had a music locker feature, where you'd just upload it once to your account and then you could stream it from anywhere like anything else on the service.

YouTube Music and Apple Music have similar features but they're not nearly as intuitive or convenient as GPM's was.

I believe this also only works if your devices are on the same LAN at some point in time to sync locally.

I've been keeping an eye on https://ibroadcast.com

It fills my use case precisely and has replaced GPM. They host my own library (various upload/sync clients), with a reasonable web/app+offline experience.

it has chromecast support, tag editing and all sorts.

I'm a little concerned how slow they've been to monetise. Free version transcodes to 128kbps, eventual paid offering ("around $3.99 USD per month", currently free) offers original-quality streaming. Not aware of any library or bandwith limitations.

Edit: avert your eyes - their landing page is atrocious but once logged in things are much better

Spotify is actually the only one of the big 3 (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music) that doesn't have a cloud music locker feature, and it's basically the entire reason I can't use it.

However, both YouTube Music and Apple Music treat your uploaded stuff as second-class citizens to the stuff streamed from their music collection. Which is one of the biggest reasons I miss GPM, since it was much better for that.

YouTube Music has a pretty intuitive music uploading system, though it comes with all the previously mentioned baggage of YTM. With Apple Music you have to upload through Apple Music on a Mac or iTunes on a PC, and it's a real clunky system that usually takes me a bunch of finagling and forcing syncs over and over again until it finally works. So pick your poison

In what way are they second class? I actually feel the opposite way, because I can use only uploaded/matched tracks in apps like Djay, Capo or GarageBand.

My only lament is lack of family sharing, other than that it's been seamless for me.

Oh that's unfortunate. I remember when you used to be able to share your whole iTunes library with people over the network, possibly even over the internet?

First things that come to mind is they don't come up in the default search (you have to manually toggle to a separate search of your library), and also they don't show up in the web player at all.

Apple offers iTunes Match [1], a service that is separate from Apple Music. It is something like $25 a year and does more or less what you're asking for here, especially in conjunction with Apple Music.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146

also itunes match is included in apple music and you can mix and match apple music and match (or local songs and if they are not local), you can also sync these with any device

That’s exactly what Apple Music does, and the article even mentioned.

I switched from GPM to Apple Music and not Spotify because I have a lot of tracks that don’t exist on streaming services. I can have playlists consisting of apple Music songs and my own songs, and get full Siri integration, play on HomePods etc

Hmm around 18-24 months ago I gave Apple Music a try but found there were TONS of tracks from my personal library that the service would not play. Perhaps they’ve improved things since then? I went all-in using Plex as a personal media server since then and while the UI isn’t as nice, it lets me steam my personal library anywhere from any device.

You may have chosen not to subscribe to iTunes Match which is the feature which gives you access to Apple's servers to host all your songs instead of keeping them strictly local. At least that is how I understand it.

I’m pretty positive I did this actually as I recall the ‘match’ service being an additional fee. I was stoked to have a cloud option for my library as I’d been maintaining it for 10+ years and always griping about backups. I recall it working great for tunes I’d purchased from Bandcamp but when it came to tracks which had been in my library for many years (originating from many different sources), they simply didn’t show up in my library. Again- this was around 2 years ago so it’s possible this is no longer an issue.

I’ve since setup a Synology NAS with Plex and it’s mostly great.

You don’t need to subscribe to Match if you’re an Apple Music subscriber.

Why not just run your own streaming service? You're here on hn, so standing up a webserver (or even a Raspberry Pi) is hardly beyond your means presumably. Subsonic [0] appears to be well polished. I've used a FOSS fork called Airsonic [1] previously, though I've played with (and liked) Polaris [2] in the past.

All three would meet your (possibly only) requirement of using your own music, and I wouldn't consider any too difficult to set up.

[0] http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

[1] https://airsonic.github.io/

[2] https://github.com/agersant/polaris

+1 for Subsonic, it's nice. I haven't used it extensively, but have had it running now for 1-2 months listening casually without issues.

I operate a service that does this: https://asti.ga/

Happy to answer any questions.

I also wrote up some other example services a while back:

- https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2021/0... (these integrate storage)

- https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2021/0... (these are bring-your-own storage)

You can still upload your own music to Youtube Music. The UI sucks (you have to use entirely separate search boxes to search for uploaded vs. Youtube tracks, and AFAIK you can't edit metadata without downloading and re-uploading files) but it gets the job done.

I put my personal collection on Dropbox and use an app (iOS) called TuneBox that presents it as a streaming music player

Youtube music subscription was supposed to do this, with your previous Google Play library, if you made the transition. Using Google Home devices. I plan to pony up for that someday when things settle a bit for me, so hope I do get this service.

Just checked and they still have my music "stored" waiting for me.

>Does any service like that still exist?

https://www.ibroadcast.com/home/

The article mentions this as one the key differentiators between AM and other big music services.

Apple Music does.

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