Is this the beginning of the end for Play Music?

[Grabber5.0]

Do the free versions of Pandora or Specify work with Google Home?

 

[kct1975]

Do the free versions of Pandora or Specify work with Google Home?

I think that they do allow you to stream 'stations', but the free versions of both don't let you stream your own music

I am just wondering if there is any Music Streaming Service or app that allows a user to upload their own music and stream it a Google Home smart speaker

As I mentioned, I haven't found any

 

[eric002]

Yeah, unfortunately, I don't think so either. When Google play music was popular in the past, the free basic version allowed you to upload your own music to the service while streaming other music albums for yourself. YouTube music doesn't allow you to do this for free other! Sorry to say that!

 

[hallux]

I moved to Plex, but it costs $5/month for my use. Not really a big deal. I can download my music to my mobile devices for offline listening, and my router can be set up as a VPN endpoint so I can connect to the VPN and access my Plex server from anywhere with an internet connection.

It has some quirks, mostly with Android Auto, but it's working for me.

 

[B. Diddy]

@kct1975, just curious, why are all of those icons showing up in your posts?

 

[kct1975]

@kct1975, just curious, why are all of those icons showing up in your posts?

Sorry if that is annoying to anyone....my SwiftKey keyboard automatically adds emoj icons to certain words I type.

If it is an annoyance, I will ensure that I discontinue the use of them when I post here.

My apologies to everyone if I annoyed you or anyone else.

 

[B. Diddy]

Oh, it's no problem -- I was just wondering if there was some forum software toggle that was adding the icons.

 

[kbz1960]

I still fail to see, yes I'm older, why people want to upload their music to a streaming service to use data to listen to it.

Why not just put it on your phone and bluetooth to your speakers. Am I missing something other than a way for carriers etc to make more money off of us for something we can do without them?

 

[hallux]

I still fail to see, yes I'm older, why people want to upload their music to a streaming service to use data to listen to it.

This is why I went the Plex route. I have a Mac Mini that's always on in my apartment and had more than enough space for hosting my music files. I can cache from that to my devices, and cast from those devices to my speakers.

 

[B. Diddy]

I still fail to see, yes I'm older, why people want to upload their music to a streaming service to use data to listen to it.

Why not just put it on your phone and bluetooth to your speakers. Am I missing something other than a way for carriers etc to make more money off of us for something we can do without them?

It depends on how much music a person owns, and if there's enough storage on the phone for an entire library -- big libraries can be a hassle. If you have to use an SD card, that means dealing with the possibility of the card failing (not to mention the time it takes to transfer an entire library to a card, which can take a while if the library is big, and which can also lead to data errors when transferring a gigantic block of data). But I agree that a smaller, more manageable library makes sense to keep on the phone and play directly from there.

I used to prefer keeping music locally on some form of storage (in my car, typically on a USB drive plugged directly into the system), but I've gotten so used to subscribing to streaming services and having almost any music I want at my fingertips that it'd be hard to go back. (And I have unlimited data on T-Mobile, so that's not a limiting factor for me.)

 

[eric002]

It depends on how much music a person owns, and if there's enough storage on the phone for an entire library -- big libraries can be a hassle. If you have to use an SD card, that means dealing with the possibility of the card failing (not to mention the time it takes to transfer an entire library to a card, which can take a while if the library is big, and which can also lead to data errors when transferring a gigantic block of data). But I agree that a smaller, more manageable library makes sense to keep on the phone and play directly from there.

I used to prefer keeping music locally on some form of storage (in my car, typically on a USB drive plugged directly into the system), but I've gotten so used to subscribing to streaming services and having almost any music I want at my fingertips that it'd be hard to go back. (And I have unlimited data on T-Mobile, so that's not a limiting factor for me.)

Yes, absolutely correct! Depends on how much music you own And also how much you listen to music. I mean for me, I'm not a music official. I just want my music to have good base in it. I know a hard Rock / metal bands I shinedown and five finger death punch. But I don't need to listen to music 24/7 so I don't need it to hog up valuable memory on my phone where I could have other stuff stored even though I keep most of my things in the Google cloud regardless.

 

[anon(50597)]

I still fail to see, yes I'm older, why people want to upload their music to a streaming service to use data to listen to it.

Why not just put it on your phone and bluetooth to your speakers. Am I missing something other than a way for carriers etc to make more money off of us for something we can do without them?

I agree. I have all my music downloaded to my phone and it will stay that way.

 

[kbz1960]

It depends on how much music a person owns, and if there's enough storage on the phone for an entire library -- big libraries can be a hassle. If you have to use an SD card, that means dealing with the possibility of the card failing (not to mention the time it takes to transfer an entire library to a card, which can take a while if the library is big, and which can also lead to data errors when transferring a gigantic block of data). But I agree that a smaller, more manageable library makes sense to keep on the phone and play directly from there.

I used to prefer keeping music locally on some form of storage (in my car, typically on a USB drive plugged directly into the system), but I've gotten so used to subscribing to streaming services and having almost any music I want at my fingertips that it'd be hard to go back. (And I have unlimited data on T-Mobile, so that's not a limiting factor for me.)

I guess I'm too cheap

 

[Laura Knotek]

It also depends on the format the music files are. I have my music files in FLAC format, so that takes up a lot of space.

 

[kct1975]

It depends on how much music a person owns, and if there's enough storage on the phone for an entire library -- big libraries can be a hassle. If you have to use an SD card, that means dealing with the possibility of the card failing (not to mention the time it takes to transfer an entire library to a card, which can take a while if the library is big, and which can also lead to data errors when transferring a gigantic block of data). But I agree that a smaller, more manageable library makes sense to keep on the phone and play directly from there.

I used to prefer keeping music locally on some form of storage (in my car, typically on a USB drive plugged directly into the system), but I've gotten so used to subscribing to streaming services and having almost any music I want at my fingertips that it'd be hard to go back. (And I have unlimited data on T-Mobile, so that's not a limiting factor for me.)

Yes, absolutely correct! Depends on how much music you own And also how much you listen to music. I mean for me, I'm not a music official. I just want my music to have good base in it. I know a hard Rock / metal bands I shinedown and five finger death punch. But I don't need to listen to music 24/7 so I don't need it to hog up valuable memory on my phone where I could have other stuff stored even though I keep most of my things in the Google cloud regardless.

As you fine colleagues has stated...
I do have a large amount of music that I don't want taking up space on my smartphone

Also, I like having the flexibility of being able to play my music on various devices and in different places.

For example, with Google Play Music I have the ability to stream my music from my smartphone or my Google Home smart speaker or my laptop or my Chromebook, etc.

Have the music saved to my phone does not give me the flexibility I need and it eats up the storage on my phone that can be used for apps.

So at this point it is starting to look like soon I am going to be forced into either paying a subscription to Google for YouTube Premium or pay a subscription for another music player service or be stuck with trying to figure out some sort of half arsed work-around.

Ohhh Well

 

[Kizzy Catwoman]

I still fail to see, yes I'm older, why people want to upload their music to a streaming service to use data to listen to it.

Why not just put it on your phone and bluetooth to your speakers. Am I missing something other than a way for carriers etc to make more money off of us for something we can do without them?

I uploaded a heap of my iTunes library to GPM like years ago. When it first started. And since the hard drive which contained my iTunes library has totally failed, I am glad I did and it means I haven't lost a load of my music. That library has now transferred to YT Music so I still have my music.

 

[kct1975]

I uploaded a heap of my iTunes library to GPM like years ago. When it first started. And since the hard drive which contained my iTunes library has totally failed, I am glad I did and it means I haven't lost a load of my music. That library has now transferred to YT Music so I still have my music.

I did something similar...although I personally never had iTunes but uploaded my large music library from my computer hard drive to GPM. The problems I have with the transition from GPM to YT Music is that unlike GPM, with YT Music or another streaming service is that I am going to have to pay for a subscription to be able stream my own music. That is very annoying to me, especially since I have be able to do it for free for so many years with GPM.

And while I know that advertisements are really annoying, personally I can live with them as long as I don't have to pay for a subscription.

As I mentioned before, my biggest problem with having a subscription is unless I am using the music streaming service daily, I will feel like I am wasting my money .

 

[Morty2264]

I did something similar...although I personally never had iTunes but uploaded my large music library from my computer hard drive to GPM. The problems I have with the transition from GPM to YT Music is that unlike GPM, with YT Music or another streaming service is that I am going to have to pay for a subscription to be able stream my own music. That is very annoying to me, especially since I have be able to do it for free for so many years with GPM.

And while I know that advertisements are really annoying, personally I can live with them as long as I don't have to pay for a subscription.

As I mentioned before, my biggest problem with having a subscription is unless I am using the music streaming service daily, I will feel like I am wasting my money .

I totally agree with you. I've paid for all of my music and therefore have used Google Play Music's free music app for years without needing to pay any kind of subscription fee. So if I get YT music, it's like I'll have to pay again to listen to the music I've already paid for. That kind of hurts my head!

 

[kbz1960]

I uploaded a heap of my iTunes library to GPM like years ago. When it first started. And since the hard drive which contained my iTunes library has totally failed, I am glad I did and it means I haven't lost a load of my music. That library has now transferred to YT Music so I still have my music.

I have external backups of everything here.

 

[kct1975]

Okay so tonight I attempted to use the Bluetooth part of my Samsung S10+ phone to manually stream my own music to my Insigna Branded Google Home speaker and I kept getting 'suggestions' from the speaker to sign up for YT Music Premium.

I went into the Google Home app and it states that it 'sees' my Insigna Branded Google Home speaker, but that it cannot connect to it. It seems like I can't stream ANY content to my Insigna Branded Google Home speaker without a subscription.

WTF!

So it seems to me that the ONLY Way I will EVER be able to stream any music or anything else to my Google Speaker, is to sign up for the YT Premium account and pay $9.99 per month.

To me that is not really a good deal since I don't listen to streaming music every day. Even in my car I tend to switch around frequently between SiriusXM and regular off-air radio.

So it seems that I now have a choice to make...do I get rid of my Insigna Google Home speaker and junk it or do I sign up for a YT Premium subscription.

This completely sux!

Not to start a 'flame war' but I realize that having several monthly subscriptions is not big deal to the young generation, but to us over 40 years old, it is a big decision. Especially since we are used to owning our own music library (Records, Tapes, CDs , ect)

And it is REALLY annoying to have to pay for a subscription just to listen to music you susposedly own, especially since it isn't something I use every day.

Honestly I am not trying to be a jerk here...I know that companies like Google need to make money to stay in business, but I am willing to accept an Ad Supported service for the features that I want to use, like Google Play Music used to provide. I just really dislike wasting my money on subscription if the service isn't something that I will be using daily or almost daily. I have a really hard time justifing paying for a subscription to a service that I might use one or twice a week or less.

And before anyone uses the Cable TV argument...yes I do have a subscription with Comcast (the only television provider in the area), but I was honestly kind of pushed into it by my wife, my family, her family, and our friends. No joke, for the first six months of living in our condo, I used an 'off-air' antenna and the signal was very crappie. We were only able to get a few local channels. So as a sort of Xmas present I signed up for the Expanded Basic package that did include all of the regular cable TV channels, but didn't include any of the premium channels like HBO or Showtime. I also didn't sign up for the Netflix package.

Honestly I think that I am one of the few people I know that has never had a Netflix subscription, and my reason is for the same reason I am resisting a music streaming service subscription, I have never felt that I would get enough use out of Netflix to make it worth having a subscription. IMHO, watching a movie once a month on Netflix does not make a Netflix subscription worth it.

Similarly I have never personally had a Costco membership, since I couldn't see myself visiting a Costco more than once in a few months, which in my opinion does not make it worth it to have a Costco membership.

Okay...please forgive my rant...I just wanted to vent my frustration with Google forcing subscriptions.

Mods...if I have said anything inflammatory, please feel free to either edit this post or delete it all together.

KCT1975 Out...