Replacing Google Play Music

[boyse7en]

My phone is informing me that Google Play music is no more and that I have to switch to YouTube, Spotify or Deezer "services".

I don't want or need a streaming service, I just want to be able to play my Mp3s that are on the phone, but now if I ask Google Assistant to "play artist X" instead of playing the album's I have it starts playing videos it finds online instead. This is flaming useless.

Is there a music player that can be set to be default music player, or am I going to be tuneless on my commute?

[Crafty_]

Just use any music player, there must be loads on the store. I use the samsung one that was already on my phone. I know it is in the store, but not sure if its available for all devices, search for "Samsung Music" and see if it pops up.
If not I just found one simply called "music player" that looks very simle to use.

[boyse7en]

Crafty_ said:

Just use any music player, there must be loads on the store. I use the samsung one that was already on my phone. I know it is in the store, but not sure if its available for all devices, search for "Samsung Music" and see if it pops up.
If not I just found one simply called "music player" that looks very simle to use.

I did download a music app, but I couldn't get it to play anything using Google Assistant.
I need to be able to use voice control, and if I do it just starts up YouTube

[IanJ9375]

boyse7en said:

My phone is informing me that Google Play music is no more and that I have to switch to YouTube, Spotify or Deezer "services".

I don't want or need a streaming service, I just want to be able to play my Mp3s that are on the phone, but now if I ask Google Assistant to "play artist X" instead of playing the album's I have it starts playing videos it finds online instead. This is flaming useless.

Is there a music player that can be set to be default music player, or am I going to be tuneless on my commute?

Just transfer all your own music to Youtube Music from Google Music - very easy to do then you should be back to where you were so to speak.
https://music.youtube.com/

Guide on how to transfer - https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/969...

[boyse7en]

IanJ9375 said:

Just transfer all your own music to Youtube Music from Google Music - very easy to do then you should be back to where you were so to speak.
https://music.youtube.com/

Guide on how to transfer - https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/969...

Tried that. It just says "nothing to transfer"

I tried a music player called music player, which works fine if I click,swipe, etc but if I ask Google Assistant it still opens YouTube instead.
"Hey Google. Play Deftones on music player"
"Ok. Searching YouTube for Deftones"

[Radec]

Go to the Google Home app.
Click Settings
Click Music under Services
Click Other Music Services
Then set whatever other player app as your default player for music.

[Brother D]

IanJ9375 said:

Just transfer all your own music to Youtube Music from Google Music - very easy to do then you should be back to where you were so to speak.
https://music.youtube.com/

Guide on how to transfer - https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/969...

Don't you have to pay $9.99 a month or similar for youtube music (I think the free version requires the screen to be on all the time).

[AJB88]

Long time GPM user, uploaded a massive amount. Tried Youtube music wasn't for me.

Ended up getting Spotify Family.

[Hoofy]

I use Poweramp. It has a buffer facility which is handy for older phones or when you're doing multiple things.

I just noticed that Google Play Music gave me the message, too - note that it's only for streamed services. It looks like you can still use it for your mp3s that you have transferred or downloaded.

[paulrockliffe]

Radec said:

Go to the Google Home app.
Click Settings
Click Music under Services
Click Other Music Services
Then set whatever other player app as your default player for music.

You're limited to streaming services in there, Google Music, Youtube Music, Spotify or Deezer. None of the Apps on the phone will work with Assistant, though it looks like that might change soon, though it relies on the developer adding whatever it is they need to do into their app.

Google Music would play via Assistant from your personal library, if you've used the uploader tool to add your existing MP3s to your Play account. There's a 50k track limit. But, it will only play these from the cloud, not from your SD Card or the device. I'm fairly sure you don't need as subscription for that, but I don't know for sure.

Because they're running Google Music and Youtube Music together - they're practically the same, except Youtube will let you watch the music videos if they exist - you do need to fully migrate your account to YouTube Music. I'm not sure if you have to have a subscription to make that move or not, you shouldn't, but I wouldn't rule it out. I was asked if I wanted to migrate my subscription, then a month or two later I was then asked if I wanted to move my Library.

I'd hope that now if I cancel my subscription I can still play my Library and via Assistant. Problem I had is that when I was using it that way it would always try to play form Spotify and bombard you with adverts, so you couldn't have the free Spotify connected and get good service from it.

[Mr-B]

Stand alone MP3 players I have used are Pi and musicolet but my current favourite is blackplayer which has great equalizer settings.

[The_Jackal]

Just upload all your music to YouTube Music.
All mine was uploaded to Google Play Music before, and in the email they give a link to transfer it all over to YouTube Music in the background.
I'm assuming this is all the music you have "acquired" over the years.
It may need to be done via a desktop app though.

[colin_p]

Hoofy said:

I use Poweramp. It has a buffer facility which is handy for older phones or when you're doing multiple things.

Same, it is a properly lovely bit of software and works with Android Auto as well.

https://powerampapp.com/

[eein]

I tried the Youtube player for a bit. Truly awful and not a replacement for Google Play music in many ways. If you use it 'free' it hammers you with spam to sign up to the paid version - very, very annoying.

After a bit of research I found that VLC actually does music very well. Simple, clean, free and I already have it installed on all my devices for video.

Note that I mostly do local music files and DLNA from my NAS.

[boyse7en]

The_Jackal said:

Just upload all your music to YouTube Music.
All mine was uploaded to Google Play Music before, and in the email they give a link to transfer it all over to YouTube Music in the background.
I'm assuming this is all the music you have "acquired" over the years.
It may need to be done via a desktop app though.

I tried YouTube music today, but it doesn't work.
I have got my mp3s listed under Device Files, and they will.play if I click on them.
If, however, I ask for a track using Google Assistant, for example "hey Google play Gary Numan", I get the reply "sure, playing Gary Numan on YouTube music" and then the phone screen shows an error saying that it can't play music as there is no WiFi connection.

That implys to.me that it isn't playing "my" music at all, and is streaming it instead.

I've tried numerous MP3 players - Musicolet, Music Player etc, but GA will not play using them even if you ask specifically. "Play Amy McDonald on Musicolet" just gets "sure, playing Amy McDonald on YouTube music".

[IanJ9375]

Brother D said:

Don't you have to pay $9.99 a month or similar for youtube music (I think the free version requires the screen to be on all the time).

No different to Google Play Music - your own songs uploaded are free to listen to and basically cloud hosted for you, you can listen to their catalogue if you put up with the ads or you pay for it ad free and have "offline" ability on mobile devices etc

https://uk.pcmag.com/services-players/96378/youtub...

[Hoofy]

Brother D said:

IanJ9375 said:

Just transfer all your own music to Youtube Music from Google Music - very easy to do then you should be back to where you were so to speak.
https://music.youtube.com/

Guide on how to transfer - https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/969...

Don't you have to pay $9.99 a month or similar for youtube music (I think the free version requires the screen to be on all the time).

If you can access YT Music via Chrome like you can with YT, you can play it then turn off the screen. The video/music will stop then when you turn on the phone in the lock screen, you can hit the play transport button.

[paulrockliffe]

boyse7en said:

The_Jackal said:

Just upload all your music to YouTube Music.
All mine was uploaded to Google Play Music before, and in the email they give a link to transfer it all over to YouTube Music in the background.
I'm assuming this is all the music you have "acquired" over the years.
It may need to be done via a desktop app though.

I tried YouTube music today, but it doesn't work.
I have got my mp3s listed under Device Files, and they will.play if I click on them.
If, however, I ask for a track using Google Assistant, for example "hey Google play Gary Numan", I get the reply "sure, playing Gary Numan on YouTube music" and then the phone screen shows an error saying that it can't play music as there is no WiFi connection.

That implys to.me that it isn't playing "my" music at all, and is streaming it instead.

I've tried numerous MP3 players - Musicolet, Music Player etc, but GA will not play using them even if you ask specifically. "Play Amy McDonald on Musicolet" just gets "sure, playing Amy McDonald on YouTube music".

You have two issues here, first one is that there's nothing that will play local content via Google Assistant. The second is that 90% of the people replying to you are completely ignoring that you asked for options that work with Google Assistant.

The only thing I can think of is that there are caching settings in there somewhere that allocate spare device space to a music cache. You might be able to use that with clever use of playlists to get it to cache what you want so it goes to stream it, fails and then plays from your cache. But it's probably at least a complete pain in the arse, or won't work well enough for you. Or both.

My last throw of the dice would be Routines. You can probably use a Routine to make a particular phrase trigger an IFTTT program to play a particular playlist on a particular app on your device. I'd be a bit more confident that you could get there with Tasker or similar. But again it's going to be a complete pain in the arse to setup unless you're happy to just have a few playlists to cover all your requests. If you want per Artist and have to setup something for each artist, it'll quickly get boring!

Good luck!

[shed driver]

I think I'm a bit of a doofus when it comes to this. I've uploaded about 12,000 music tracks, some pretty obscure remixes to Google Play Music. When I asked my Google speaker to play a particular album or artist it would do this, no problem. I've migrated them all to YTM via the official tool. Now when I ask my speaker to play a particular track or artist it says "Checkout this You Tube station related to <artist>" - that's not what I particularly want especially after spending a fair bit of money purchasing music via Google Play.

Am I missing something really obvious?

And I really hate those adverts!

SD.

[Hoofy]

shed driver said:

I think I'm a bit of a doofus when it comes to this. I've uploaded about 12,000 music tracks, some pretty obscure remixes to Google Play Music. When I asked my Google speaker to play a particular album or artist it would do this, no problem. I've migrated them all to YTM via the official tool. Now when I ask my speaker to play a particular track or artist it says "Checkout this You Tube station related to <artist>" - that's not what I particularly want especially after spending a fair bit of money purchasing music via Google Play.

Am I missing something really obvious?

And I really hate those adverts!

SD.

Can you not still use Google Play to play your music?