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Google Cloud Music

Google Will Delete Users' Play Music Library Later This Month (9to5google.com) 63

Posted by msmash from the PSA dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google Play Music stopped working at the start of December, but the files you uploaded to the cloud locker and other data remain available for export. That will be changing later in February when Google deletes all information associated with Play Music. Besides all the songs you've uploaded to the cloud locker since the service's inception in 2011, Play Music data includes purchases, playlists, stations, albums/songs saved to your library, and likes/dislikes.
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Google Will Delete Users' Play Music Library Later This Month More

Google Will Delete Users' Play Music Library Later This Month

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  • Quelle Suprise ? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TractorBarry ( 788340 ) on Friday February 05, 2021 @11:09AM (#61030792) Homepage

    And this is why you never, ever, ever, ever trust your data to cloud services. (a.k.a. "other people's servers")

    Or, for that matter, rent access to music/films/data etc.

    Sadly this lesson will never be learned.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by SirSlud ( 67381 )

      Uh, what's the problem, captain drama? I can exfiltrate my data and purchases - which I have backed up anyhow because I uploaded/purchased it in the first place and is a reasonable expectation, particularly if you're saying people should manage their own data in the first place.

      • Because as a computer tech who has tried to help clients after a system failure, 90+% of users never have a recent backup. The words I heard all the time was "I was going to do a backup next week".

      • Uh, what's the problem, captain drama?

        I think the problem is this service has been available for almost 120 months and now they’re giving everyone 1 month notice to move everything. I can almost understand if this was a tiny company that couldn’t pay the light bill, but this is Google, they could just leave it up for download only.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by teg ( 97890 )

          Uh, what's the problem, captain drama?

          I think the problem is this service has been available for almost 120 months and now they’re giving everyone 1 month notice to move everything. I can almost understand if this was a tiny company that couldn’t pay the light bill, but this is Google, they could just leave it up for download only.

          They didn't announce the closure now - this was announced in August last year [consumerreports.org], and the article I refer to even has a how to on how to save the music. Now, you can easily argue you should never depend on a Google service [killedbygoogle.com] - look, shiny!, where was I?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SirSlud ( 67381 )

          They've been communicating about this for a year, dingo.

    • Re:Quelle Suprise ? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by known_coward_69 ( 4151743 ) on Friday February 05, 2021 @11:21AM (#61030828)

      only seem to be a problem with anyone not named Apple. i can still access my itunes stuff from 20 years ago

    • Re:Quelle Suprise ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Friday February 05, 2021 @11:25AM (#61030834) Homepage

      Also, this summary is misleading. All that data in Google Play music can be transferred to Youtube Music (including purchases and uploads) so beyond exfiltrating it and taking your ball and going elsewhere, which you can do if you don't want/like Youtube Music, you can simply continue to use it with Youtube Music.

      About the only major (crappy) change with Youtube Music is you can't upload or buy anymore as it's just a subscription service.

      I really think the only way you could complain about this is that you either expect that all services that are not your own that contain any data you value should exist in perpetuity, or you expect everybody to run all digital data services they will ever need to use in their lives.

      My doctor has all my medical files. I don't expect him to live forever, or his office to be there forever. All I expect is that if or when he retires or moves, I'm given reasonable opportunity to move that data elsewhere. I don't see how that's different as it pertains to online services.

      • YouTube music is shit.

        I can't find songs by play count, ratings, or other dimensions or aggregations of dimensions.

        Google Play Music had a sortable spreadsheet view. These new players like Spotify and YouTube Music are flashy and threadbare. They lack power. They're dumbed down for the masses that just want to tune into something and don't care to spend time curating.

        Sadly it's easier to cater to the 99% who don't give a fuck than the 1% who are truly passionate. It's the problem of our time.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SirSlud ( 67381 )

          That's fine. Don't use it. I agree with you, it sucks a lot more than Google Play. But we can take our data out and move it elsewhere. Run a Plex server, it's good for folks like us. I agree it sucks that Play is shutting down.

          -10 points for "dumbed down for the masses" tho. It makes you sound so fucking basic.

          • What's depressing is it's very hard to find any legitimate service where I can buy MP3s. The whole music industry is shifting to a subscription model, and I rather like my music collection. I've heard Amazon's music service allows download of MP3s, but haven't checked it out yet. If I can't do it that way, then it's back to buying CDs and ripping them.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by teg ( 97890 )

              What's depressing is it's very hard to find any legitimate service where I can buy MP3s. The whole music industry is shifting to a subscription model, and I rather like my music collection. I've heard Amazon's music service allows download of MP3s, but haven't checked it out yet. If I can't do it that way, then it's back to buying CDs and ripping them.

              Apple's iTunes Store still allows you to purchase and download music in non-DRMed AAC format.

            • I find patreon subscriptions to original artists work better than the big music publishers these days. Do it right and you not only get original MP3s, you get a new online friend who sends you absolute crap every so often just to get your opinion.

            • > What's depressing is it's very hard to find any legitimate service where I can buy MP3s.
              > I've heard Amazon's music service allows download of MP3s,
              > haven't checked it out yet.

              You should. Here's the list of 69 cent specials today:

              https://amzn.to/2O9P9GC [amzn.to]

              Or just go to amazon.com/music . Last I tried I had to launch the web player to get the download link, but somebody who uses it more can comment on the current mechanism.

            • Most of the (possibly hundreds of) mp3's I've bought via Amazon (on a PC) offered streaming links, but I chose to download them to local storage (provided you keep backups, this always lasts longer than licensing agreements governing streaming content).

              Only on a few occasions did I wind up in the Amazon player app (which still allows you to download purchased tracks), which may have been related to the method of buying multiple tracks at once (i.e. the "MP3 Cart"--an option I haven't seen displayed recen

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Aczlan ( 636310 )

              Amazon does sell MP3s both when buying a digital version of a song (or album) and with their "AutoRip" when you buy a physical CD from Amazon (not from a 3rd party seller, has to be sold by Amazon).

              Aaron Z

            • I never stopped buying CD's. Picked up one last time I did an amazon order for some other stuff. I stopped buying LP's in around 83, and have used CD's since then. I'll rip the CD's onto a thumb drive for car use.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        Thanks to google takeout and the warnings, they get relatively high marks for how to cope with this.

        However, the frequency that Google kills products is something to be frustrated with. Particularly since they generally are killing one thing off and doing another in the exact same market with similar features. It's hard to pick google for *anything* because of their short attention span and handling what should be straightforward rebrands in messy ways that muck with what could have been seamless transition

      • (...) you can simply continue to use it with Youtube Music.

        Except if your music collection includes a lot of music classified as "for children", as then YouTube's asinine COPPA-compliance misfeatures enter into action preventing you from managing them properly, including adding them to favorites, playlists, or even listening to them, because you absolutely, positively, cannot be trusted with a checkbox in which you said "only adults use this account", and therefore the site must assume you're a children, or have one looking at the screen, whenever you click anythin

      • YT Music app doesn't work well with my car's bluetooth.

        Play Music was perfect. It's over year old bug report, and impacts only some phones (but Google's phones are included).

        YT Music sucks, and if it wasn't for the add free regular youtube, I'd switch. As it is, I've started looking at it as a free add on to YouTube premium while before YouTube premium was a free add on to Play Music.

      • 'About the only major (crappy) change with Youtube Music is you can't upload or buy anymore as it's just a subscription service.' Yes, you can. I add stuff to YTM. What you can't do any longer is download it if you want it for some reason. I must have 20K titles on YTM; (askme about how their file transfer doubled every song!) but I never use it. Was going to go Spotify only, then I got a new MacBook Pro and thought, "I'll just load my favorites on here." Done. I keep everything backed up on Google Drive

      • you can still upload

        https://support.google.com/you... [google.com]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gsdfa ( 6545090 )
      literally, f*ck google

    • Every time I purchased on album on Google Play Music, I downloaded the MP3s right away and archived them. I also decrypt everything I purchase off of Google Play Books as well (though that's obviously totally not-legit because it's naughty naughty to break DRM, but fuck 'em). Downloading the entire catalogue right now in case there's anything I missed, but in general, I don't leave anything up to the "Cloud", which has this habit of deciding I don't deserve the data I purchased.

    • What lesson? The lesson I just learnt from your example here is that cloud service providers provide you a perfectly reliable service and when they shutdown they provide you not only an alternative but also a long notice period for you to migrate to said new service.

      How err.... horrible? Evil? errr. Help me out here, I know you're pushing an anti-cloud agenda but if this is an example of it, you're going to have a hard time convincing anyone of your position.

    • Cloud is great for geographically separated backups, but always keep your own local copies.

    • Double that for Encrypted content that you 'buy' but will never be given the necessary codex to download and use on your network.
      When server owner decides your done, your done , so don't imagine you 'own' anything.

  • Rinse, Repeat (Score:3, Insightful)

    by careysub ( 976506 ) on Friday February 05, 2021 @11:21AM (#61030830)

    The moral to this story (repeated many, many times now): Never use services that Google offers as they will be shut-down with short notice (if you are lucky) or no notice. Gmail is safe (probably) and using YouTube (but not trusting content to it) is safe, but that is about it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by SirSlud ( 67381 )

      Were you using Google Play music? They've been telling users about this for over a year.

      • So did google decide to entirely kill their only version of the iTune store? If so, then I can see the upset here. When you pick a platform on the ios/android divide, this comes with the assumption that both brands offer the same mainstream services. For google to decide to shitcan a core component, and cast it aside the way they did Jingle/Ribbon/Gtalk/Goog411/Hangouts sends a pretty strong indicator that you should never get comfortable with anything they offer. Gmail is going to absolutely be devastating

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Celt ( 125318 )

      short notice?

      Google informed me well over 6 months ago, I downloaded my data back then.
      If you think that about 8 months notice is short then you must be really behind on paying bills

    • Re:Rinse, Repeat (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday February 05, 2021 @12:55PM (#61031224)

      The moral to this story (repeated many, many times now): Never use services that Google offers as they will be shut-down with short notice (if you are lucky) or no notice. Gmail is safe (probably) and using YouTube (but not trusting content to it) is safe, but that is about it.

      We all get the moral of it. Whenever you use a Google service you can trust that they give you a half a year notice period (we did cover this on Slashdot 6 months ago [slashdot.org]) for which to move your data, provide you the ability to move your data, and in most cases even offer you an alternative that exists within Google itself.

      So err.. fuck Google... or something like that? Jesus you people complain about anything don't you.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        We all get the moral of it...Jesus you people complain about anything don't you.

        It's like Lucy pulling the football. Are you claiming it's fine because we can trust her to help Charlie Brown get back up and dust him off? Of course she tees up yet another service and, like the OP said, rinse and repeat. So yeah, we get the moral.

        • It's like Lucy pulling the football. Are you claiming it's fine because we can trust her to help Charlie Brown get back up and dust him off?

          No, I'm criticising people like you for thinking that Charlie brown didn't actually happily and successfully kick that football for over 10 years, and wasn't told by Lucy 6 months ago that the ball will be removed with repeated warnings and then replaced with a soccer ball. If you Mr Charlie brown end up needing to be dusted off, I can suggest a good mental ward where you will be taken care of for your special needs.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They announced this a year ago and I decided not to bother moving my data to YouTube Music as they offered to do.

      Instead I took the opportunity to clean it up a bit. Fix a few tags, clear out some crud, upload some new stuff.

      The main issue is that the app and web interface are both worse than Google Music was, but for my limited needs it works okay.

  • You can use Google Takeout to download all your data, including all purchases as MP3 files.

    • > You can use Google Takeout to download all your data, including all purchases as MP3 files.

      That's how I got mine too. Do we know if this will persist? It's really not asking too much for Google to keep around a db of blobs and hashes that represents all the songs their customers have bought. They'll claim "oh, we don't have two people interested in the project" and their tendency is to inconvenience 400 million people for reasons of that category.

      "Nobody could possibly remember this project exists i

  • Google drops the ball again. Maybe they should just stick to the search engine. They seem to be pretty good at stealing personal data and following you around the internet. Use Gmail at your own peril, knowing that they parse your emails and ruffle through your contact list. YouTube seems to be doing well, although they didn't build that they bought it.

    Apart from Android (which they also bought) I struggle to think of anything they have built from the ground up that was successful.

    • The ads.

    • Google drops the ball again.

      Dropped what ball? They had a service, they are migrating to an alternate service. They made the announcement 6 months ago. Music in the past, music in the future, six fucking month transition period.

      If this is what it means for Google to "drop the ball again" I can only conclude that it's otherwise a practically perfect company in every way.

  • For about 5 minutes. I was intrigued by their "upload your collection" feature...but the entire thing was junk. Inspired me to build my own private streaming service based on my collection.
  • So for years I bought Android phones with this crapware unremovable, and now they abandon it. They really do take the piss.

  • No one ever gets hired for recommending mayfly Google products.

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