Google Music

using it through safari on ios sux, 'cause it stops playing after one song.

my initial hate is fading a bit. queuing and playlist creation is pretty slick for a web app. nicer than Rdio and not applicable with Spotify. the lack of Last.fm integration can be overcome pretty easily with a Chrome extension or Greasescript.

I currently pay for both Spotify and Rdio (for most things I prefer Rdio, but I use Spotify to cover some catalog gaps). if Google released a decent iOS app or improved the way it works in mobile Safari I might dump one of them for this. if they added 3rd party support so that I could run it through my Sonos I'd consider dumping both. with that said, I'm still annoyed that they didn't try harder to differentiate and/or improve over the existing services.

I use Google Music and it's great, with the caveat that you have to upload the mp3s upfront. Their Music Manager program does all the work though -- you just point it at a folder or tell it to upload whatever is in / gets added to iTunes and it does that then and on-going as you add more. The easy part is I can stream to any pc, my old android phone (works great over old 3G), and even the iPad. I do wish they had an iOS app, but I use a third-party app called gMusic which can be a little buggy but is cheap and gives you most of the functionality of the iPad's Music app.

I'll have to see if the streaming service is worth it, but Google Music itself is free and seems like an easy way to access your mp3s from anywhere.

gmusic works great for me on the iPhone, but is completely buggy to the point of being useless on the ipad

I'm using it and Im loving it - I like the match feature - and its a good way to back up all yrou compact discks

They're now offering a free trial for 4 months and I signed up to give it a whirl. I've been a Spotify user for 5 years but have noticed enough differences in their catalogs that I'm intrigued. I mainly use streaming for music discovery and stream my own library separately.

I noticed if you have a lahfshit copy of an mp3 they will match it with a good quality one - nice!

The most important part of Google Play Music is how it makes YouTube ad-free. Otherwise, it's comparable to the other services. Less ubiquitous and social as Spotify, doesn't integrate with iTunes like Apple Music. Catalog is very similar now. Doesn't recommend as well as Apple or Spotify, either. But seriously, no ads on Youtube can't be beat.

i use this thing. my only problem is you can't be listening and play a youtube video at the same time, which is fucked. especially if you're downstairs listening to music and someone wants to watch a youtube upstairs on your computer

I noticed if you have a lahfshit copy of an mp3 they will match it with a good quality one - nice!

I've tried a million times to upload the ABBA And Prisoners Of Technology mash up "Chiq" as part of The Outlaws album and it point blank refuses to play this and instead replaces it with a (nice, clean) MP3 of Chiquitita. Can you turn matching off (I'm wondering as I type this)...?

OK, ignore me, I see there's a "fix incorrect match " option. Carry on.

Well, that did NOT work. Sigh.

I ran into this issue a little while back, when I noticed the YYYs’ “Black Tongue” was censored (of all things)

The “fix incorrect match” thing does work but is slow (24-48 hours in my experience) and you need to have the pc and software it loaded through connected so it pulls in your original mp3 whenever the heck it’s ready to.

Ah, right. Too impatient me. I'll wait a bit!

I've not been able to connect through Music Manager for weeks. I've tried a bunch of fixes and fuck knows. I'd assumed it was part of the great phasing out project but maybe I'm just a spanner.

This service suxx (particularly both desktop & app UI); but it was the only free option I found a few years ago when I decided to begin ripping & uploading a bunch of my CDs... so it's what I use.

I've begun to switch to YouTube Music and meh. Google Play Music wasn't perfect but I'd figured out how to automatically upload anything I added to my collection and could download select albums to my (Android) phone.

Uploading to YouTube Music is straightforward enough but navigating uploads is awkward and I can't see a way to download to a device. Anyone worked out how to do this?

So after Play Music stopped cooperating, I was pushed by my Pixel to get Youtube Music, but that's clearly intended for streaming only. It even struggles to read the local library files whenever I'm out of network signal.

What then is the best mp3 player app? winamp?

Am I living a fundamentally broken life to want to play mp3s on my phone in the end days of 2020?

I use iSyncr (Mac desktop app, I'm guessing they have something for Windows) + Rocket Player, works great

some of my friends swear by poweramp

I have enjoyed Poweramp for years.

i've started using poweramp and it's nowhere near as pleasant to use as play music used to be for local files. it's usable but the UI is pretty awkward and bloated in places. i tried using youtube music and while the UI is more pleasant it was also awkward from being so streaming-focused and would also regularly order album tracklists incorrectly, completely ignoring disc numbers (so it'd go disc 1 track 1, disc 2 track 1, disc 1 track 2, etc.), and putting tracks 10+ before track 2 which was a real dealbreaker. i never had a problem with it not being able to read local files without network availability though.

I've been through the exact same process P. Flick, and have ended up with Poweramp. There's an extra layer of faff with having to add stuff to my phone (via a cable) but the app is great.