General Discussion

It was the best music service there was imo.

Now it's buying my music and Jellyfinning it up.

I was a day one GPM music user until it was discontinued. That app was my most used service ever and it took thousands of hours to curate my whole collection there. When Google killed it, I vowed to never become dependent on a Google product much less a cloud based service ever again. PlexAmp is my go to now.

Let's all of us stop making the mistake of trusting big tech. They always make a good product you actually want then rugpull once you're settled. YouTube music is passably okay but there's a dozen bugs and issues that I'm still struggling with that didn't exist in Google music

I'll die on the hill that GPM was and still is the best music service I ever used. I don't think I ever had a single recommendation that wasn't on point for me. The service worked flawless and the app was easy to use. When we got the notice our hearts sank. Spotify doesn't even compare .

Does anyone else remember when Gmail was invite only and you only got like 10 invites?

Remember when the Intenet made you optimistic? That's why I think these posts gut me so much. Because it doesn't do that anymore.

Anyway off to continue doom scrolling.

Ah yes, Google Music was nice.

I'm so happy to still have my trusty iPod Classic 128Gb. I have a little Bluetooth dongle for its headphone jack (remember those?) that pairs with my hearing aids. All my tunes and podcasts in my pocket, no phone signal required.

GPM was my jam. It had simple features that I would later take for granted, like remembering the exact track I left off on, and the number of times I've played a particular track. I only keep YTM because it comes with premium (no ads on YT). The second they separate premium from YTM, I'll drop it.

Man GPM was the jam.. found so many new artists with that service. I was an early adopter and gladly paid my monthly fee.

And then YouTube music happened.... the bastards.

I rolled my own Plex server and am on plexamp for music now.

I'll never go back to streaming.

terrible. I thought I would never need a copy of my music files again - They're uploaded to Google so it's all good.

When it crashed, it was an extreme hassle to download the several gigs, I ended up storing them on a phone temporarily, which then died and is likely not recoverable. I lost some rare and unique recordings like the music from my old band that I recorded.

Maintaining this would have been a pittance for Google.

EDIT: See replies below for the solution. Thanks Lemmy!

I used Google Play Music for purchases/online music locker and loved it. I eventually became that idiot that never downloaded all their purchases before the switch to Youtube Music happened.

Now I can't even open Youtube Music because it loads up my GPM library and rubs in my face that I essentially paid to have a bunch of music pre-listed for streaming that now has unskippable ads that I can't listen to unless I leave my screen on and unlocked.

I was too broke and slammed to get a new external drive in order to get all my music downloaded and saved from GPM at the time of the switch, but I look back on it and think about how I could've skipped meals and stuff to have gotten something with just enough space to save that music.

And now almost all of Google's "offerings" are enshittified to no end. 🤬

Oh yes, the enshittification of music streaming.

To be fair, most people seem to be fine with a "broadcast radio" type playback, where they want to hear both the music they already know/like, with other music that is at least somewhat similar to it.

A nontrivial number of people are more like you, who want this specific music to be played and nothing more. But that perspective, at least from what I've seen, is not held by the majority of users. So we get random trash thrown in with our personally curated lists of songs and albums.

Catering to the majority is fine, IMO, since that's what will pay the bills. I get it. From a business perspective it makes sense. However, ignoring literally everyone else in the process is not what I would consider to be an acceptable policy. Certainly make the defaults conform to what appeals to the largest number of people, but allow the individual user to customize their experience.

Since companies won't do that, those that want to listen to specific music generally get pushed into having a local music collection, so it behaves in a way that makes sense.

It was the best! GPM's demise was an abomination.

When google music was consolidated into YouTube music it was a slightly worse experience, but mostly it somehow just ruined all of my playlists and made them unusable both on music and YouTube.

Yup, it was one of the worst "someone's getting promo and the users are getting screwed" Google decisions.

Anyone remember this list?

https://www.reddit.com/r/googleplaymusic/comments/icmwdf/one_comprehensive_list_of_youtube_music/

I would give anything to get back the I’m Feeling Lucky button for music. It generated so many fantastic spontaneous playlists.

This and Zune were peak music.

A good alternative for people who still like streaming music. I highly recommend the testimonials section https://nuclear.js.org/

Too soon, man, too soon.

Been rocking a real mp3 player with a metal shell for years now. Nothing quite like having a dedicated device you curate yourself. The last time I used spotify was 2016

If youtube-dl/yt-dlp ever stops working im in trouble

Best music platform ever, and probably forever with the way things are going.

I was a big fan of GrooveShark. I thought they could have transitioned to the paid system, but weren't able to.

I remember a glorious time when Songza existed. It was amazing and I used it every single day. Then the death march began as it was "acquired" by Satan. Satan let it live on for a short while, but after that it "sunsetted" (or whatever other idiotic word they used back then) and Satan killed it.

Oh songza, how I loved thee.