[rxhernandez]

Google music has been the best for me:

- IT doesn't block it at work(it blocks spotify)

- I don't have to install anything

- I don't see ads on youtube

- it has all of my music that came from CDs backed up to it

- I regularly discover new music through their Radio feature so long as the artist/song isn't super popular

[Someone1234]

Google Music's multi-device support is terrible though.

"Playback Paused Because Your Account Is Being Used in Another Location"

I have a Google Music Family Plan ("up to 10 devices each"). But it simply doesn't work, I cannot even play both YouTube and Google Music on the same account, let alone playback on multiple devices.

We have a few Google Home Minis and a Google Home. They were initially all set up using the same Google Account (with the Google Music Family Plan), that meant music could only play on one device throughout the whole house and computers would be blocked if any Google Home started music playback.

The only workaround is to create a new Google Account per device, then hook it into your family group which will receive your family plan. I now have four additional completely useless Google Accounts just so I can play back music in different rooms or use YouTube and Google Music at the same time.

Netflix is the only service which gets multi-device right.

[dingaling]

> I now have four additional completely useless Google Accounts

I wouldn't call them useless. With Google's propensity for algorithmicaly-determined account suspension it's probably wise to have dedicated accounts for each combination of ( person / device ) * ( Google service ).

Certainly I would encourage anyone with a reliance on G-Mail to create separate accounts for other services.

[acct1771]

Does anyone know if this is against their ToS?

Not that I give a good goddamn, but, I just realized I'd always assumed it probably was, but have never bothered to check.

[jeffhuys]

Well, check it, then! You never bothered to check but you're already waiting for 7 hours now... ;p

[KirinDave]

I agree about this. I like Google Music and unlike Apple Music it didn't and doesn't want to delete all my music then shrug and say it's my fault for not buying from Apple, but... I can't even use youtube while my 3 year old daughter tries to listen to her bath music.

It's pretty ridiculous.

[crdb]

This happened with MP3s?

It happened to me with several hundred PDFs of sheet music from IMSLP that I was storing on iBooks. I couldn't work out where they had gone or why they were wiped. I switched to GoodReader and painstakingly had to rebuild the entire collection.

[KirinDave]

It happens with all forms of stored media.

Apple is not just an expensive cloud service provider, they're an untrustworthy one.

These problems have been going of for years. Apple just doesn't invest enough to fix the problem.

[myrandomcomment]

If your job blocks Spotify and you are not in a secure area (government) you might want to find a better place to work. It just seems wrong in today’s world.

[rxhernandez]

I'm allowed to work from home >90% of the time and am paid well enough to work on state of the art biomed research; I'm not switching just because of a nuisance like IT.

[acct1771]

> I'm allowed to work from home >90%

You had us sold here.

[jacquesm]

Playing music at work comes with some pretty weird legal implications so I can totally see why some companies would block online music services so they don't accidentally crate public performances of copyrighted works.

[avianlyric]

They would have to try pretty hard to create a public performance in a workplace. Public performances need to be accessible to the public without any sort of signup or invite, and just the act of being an employee means you have an invite/signup.

[jacquesm]

Well you'd be surprised. Where I live we have this semi governmental entity that collects fees for music played in the workplace and they will happily use a set of speakers connected to a computer as proof that music has been performed publicly. It's totally nuts but they have a lot of power here.

https://www.bumastemra.nl/faq/hoe-betalen/ (Dutch)

[cageface]

Playing in a browser is unfortunately a non-starter for me. It burns way more CPU than a native player, doesn't integrate well with the MBP media controls, and can't download songs locally for listening when I'm on a bad network connection. Spotify is still my first choice but I do really miss being able to upload my own music for things that aren't in their catalog.

I don't use Apple music because I'm not willing to commit to a single-platform service.

[kalleboo]

> I don't use Apple music because I'm not willing to commit to a single-platform service

What do you mean by "single-platform service"? Apple Music is available for Windows (via iTunes) and Android (via a dedicated app)

[KozmoNau7]

Where's the Linux player? Spotify has one.

[cageface]

iTunes on Windows is garbage and the Android version of Apple Music is buggy as hell.

[dawnerd]

To be fair it’s also buggy as hell on iOS and Mac.

[IBM]

The Android app has 3.5 stars. It must not be buggy for most people.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.andr...

[thirtyseven]

3.5 is a bad rating for an Android app. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Netflix and even the IRS app all have > 4.0 scores.

[dep_b]

It used to be rated much higher, but after Apple bought it some of the more rabid users of Android felt the necessity to post negative reviews because they're so offended by iPhones every day of their lives.

Something similar to: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2015/09/17/move-to-ios-android-...

I think >99% of Android users don't fall into that camp if they're even interested in iOS vs Android in the first place, don't get me wrong. But that <1% should seek professional help IMHO.

[wolco]

Those are weak numbers. The majority selected 5 but the recent comments are very low which usually means changes that made the product worse. The second most popular entry is 1.

[fourthark]

That's typically a bad rating online.

https://xkcd.com/1098/

[dangoor]

The MBP media controls part of your concerns can be solved by Radiant Player: http://radiant-player.github.io/radiant-player-mac/

Your other concerns aren't made any better though.

[bitmapbrother]

Google Play Music also allows you to upload your own music:

>You can add up to 50,000 songs to Google Play Music from your personal music collection using Google Play Music for Chrome or Music Manager (up to 300MB per song). Once you've added your music, you can listen to it through the Google Play Music app and on your computer.

[joecool1029]

I've used this for years but moving away to use Plex as Google never seems to have figured out reliable caching.

Syncing to device offline is fine but Google music often seems to crap out streaming between songs on Android and iOS and I'm stuck skipping tracks or having to restart playing.

Never had issues with Spotify, plex, tidal, or Pandora in this regard.

[animex]

Man, I miss Songza. While some of it seems absorbed, it just doesn't seem as UX/UI elegant as it was.

[rock_hard]

It sure feels like a regression not to have it.

The surving players in the market are uninspired in comparison :(

[askafriend]

IT blocks Spotify? That's just bizarre. I would personally quit working at any place that tried to infantilize employees by blocking sites like that.

[Trav5]

My guess would be that IT would block streaming to reduce load and/or internet connection cost. Especially if you have a lot of people in the building.

[gurkendoktor]

A quick google search says that Spotify is using 144 MB/h for high-quality streaming[1] (premium only), so that's roughly 1 GB per person per working day. That's quite a bit - without Spotify, I burn through roughly 500 MB per day when working.

[1] https://thomas.vanhoutte.be/miniblog/spotify-data-consumptio...

[mikehines]

I was at first skeptical but Google Music was better than I expected that it was responsive and helped me discover new music. Apple Music however...

[jxn]

Further, it works really well with "Assistant" / Home. "Play that song that goes ... " "Go back 10 seconds" "Pause" "Resume" "Listen to song X on all speakers" "Play Journey song from the Tron Soundtrack" all work well... but... they've got no damned API, so that sucks.

[KozmoNau7]

Google Play Music's catalogue is absolutely terrible. They cram together artists with similar names, put wrong artist pictures on artist pages, and there is absolutely no way to get them to fix it. I have submitted a large number of support requests and error reports for mislabeled content, and exactly none of it has been fixed.

In comparison, Spotify usually fixes reported content errors within a week or two, and they're started a thing called Line-In, where users can directly submit edits to content information. The edits are obviously still vetted, but it speeds up the process significantly.

[peterburkimsher]

Music is blocked at work? That concept seems so strange to me.

I use iTunes 10.6.3, and sync using USB to an iPod.

Yes, it uses a lot of disk space. But no network admin can take it away from me. I don't get adverts.

Discovering new music is more challenging, but I've found that talking to friends, or seeing what bands they Like on Facebook is more efficient at finding music I really enjoy instead of trusting some algorithm.

[rmwaite]

Apple Music also supports adding your own ripped CDs.

[jagger27]

As does Google Play.

[thisisit]

So you are working with a bank? Those are the places which mostly block these kind of apps. If you are then it is a matter of time before they are on to Google music and blocking it too.

[rxhernandez]

No I'm in the biomed industry. I've heard of several other major tech companies doing this as well. I've been doing this for 4 years while spotify has been blocked for 4 years. I doubt IT at my company will look into finding a way to block google anytime soon.

[n1000]

On T-mobile in the US, spotify streaming doesn’t count against mobile data quota ;)

[dingaling]

But if a fixed-line provider did that it would be considered a violation of network neutrality and the pitchforks come out.

How can a future challenger to Spotify compete in such am environment? etc

[millstone]

Well there's 45 services that already do, and it doesn't seem particularly hard to get on that list:

https://www.t-mobile.com/offer/music-freedom-list.html

[scarface74]

Easy. Ask T-mobile to be included. It's free for the provider and from everything I know, relatively easy for a provider of legal video or audio content.

[cyxxon]

In Germany, It's the other way around - I'd love to continue using Google Play Music, but Spotify is included in the T-Mobile zero-rating, and GPM is not... :/

[dawnerd]

Pretty sure that’s not a thing anymore if you’re on their newer plans.

[wyclif]

Really? Where do their policies spell this out?

[dawnerd]

https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-10969

Note that their new one plans are excluded because one plans are already "unlimited".

https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-24291

Also states this.

[TheArcane]

> it blocks spotify

I can't think of a reason justifying this.