I fucking HATE YouTube Music.

[mpexus]

Unfortunately they don't have a lossless option. 320kbps is the max bitrate you can select. Having said that, I used to listen everything in FLAC and I don't find that I am losing such a huge amount of definition by listening songs in 320kbps.

Its really really hard (if not impossible for most of us) to distinguish 320kb from a Wave file. Especially after a certain age and ear abuse.

 

[p0ke]

Its really really hard (if not impossible for most of us) to distinguish 320kb from a Wave file. Especially after a certain age and ear abuse.

Yeah, I used to rip my CD's to FLAC before my main HDD broke. Then I got Spotify (the family account makes it really cheap per person) and I honestly can't tell the difference 99% of the time.
Also, Spotify is super convenient and the apps are well made on all platforms, and what I like the most is that you can run it on an Android TV box for example and control it from your phone. I have a headless Android TV connected to PC speakers on the patio and whenever I wanna listen to something there, I just change the device in the Spotify app and the music jumps there.

 

[Manurack]

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Laid to Rest by Lamb of God in uncompressed audio sounds sooooooooo much better with Spotify!

Like I said in my original post, YouTube Music compressed every single song and especially Laid to Rest by LOG when it only pumped out the vocals and and drowned out the guitars.

The transfer took almost half an hour. But damn, I'm quite satisfied with Spotify! Fuck YouTube Music!

 

[TedEH]

sounds sooooooooo much better with Spotify!

I've been using Spotify for a while now and I have a strong suspicion that they add an extra layer of compression (audio compression, not file compression) to a lot of their content - so you end up with a very LOUD end result. Or maybe it's just the stuff I listen to, or I'm imagining it, I don't know. But I've tried to compare youtube vs Spotify mixes for the same song before and almost every time the Spotify copy was louder. And as is well documented, louder = "sounds better".

 

[Manurack]

I've been using Spotify for a while now and I have a strong suspicion that they add an extra layer of compression (audio compression, not file compression) to a lot of their content - so you end up with a very LOUD end result. Or maybe it's just the stuff I listen to, or I'm imagining it, I don't know. But I've tried to compare youtube vs Spotify mixes for the same song before and almost every time the Spotify copy was louder. And as is well documented, louder = "sounds better".

In my experience, YouTube Music compressed the songs and made the songs sound quiter. The Spotify songs sound exactly like Google Play Music - uncompressed musical freedom!

 

[ElysianGuitars]

I'm not a fan either, I've used Google Play Music since the beginning. The most annoying part to me about Youtube Music is that they list things in 2 separate ways, one being music available on Youtube, the other being music you uploaded, so it's like maintaining 2 separate libraries. Annoying interface choice there. I'm also having to download my Google Play Music library, 38 files, 2GB each, and I have to click on each individual one. If I download one file and then wait too long to download the next, it forces me to re-login to Google, which makes the whole process that much more annoying.

 

[davemeistro]

Also a Google Music refugee, moved over to Astiga, which I don't think I saw mentioned here yet.

A little clunky, but it lets you pull in your library from a bunch of cloud storage sites (Google Drive, Dropbox, MEGA, etc), and the free version supports 320kbps with no ads.

 

[Manurack]

So I transferred music from Google Play Music to Spotify using tunemymusic.com and while 90% of my correct music did transfer, some songs with the same song title like Halo by Machine Head showed up as FUCKING BEYONCE's song Halo... Along with many, many other songs with the same name, but by different artists.

Kayne fucking West showed up on my playlists as well and I've never heard that dipshit's music or ever added it to my music.

Can somebody give me a reliable source of transferring music from Google Play Music to Spotify without it fucking up and adding artists that I have never listened to?

 

[nikki-k]

I went through this as well. Actually, still going through it. My initial primary reason for Google Play Music was the ability to upload your owned/own music to GPM, and stream it alongside their streamable music. Secondary was gapless playback. I have lots of OOP albums that no service has licensed, along with albums that got caught in legal issue land, and even some of the few artists that refuse to allow their stuff on streaming services. Amazon also offered uploading, and retained copies of purchased music. However, they did not have gapless playback (pause between every song, ugh), and their selection was a bit thin compared to GPM. Spotify is... I have a very strong dislike for them, and they have never offered upload services. YouTube Music is abysmal. I tried, I truly did. But, with hundreds of playlists, and easily over a thousand albums bookmarked, scrolling on an (Android) phone is beyond painful. Flick/scroll, wait for next batch to load, flick/scroll, wait... repeat. Just getting through the As takes wayyyy too much time. To get to an L or M artist? Or playlist? Go away and come back, resets to A (or Z, if you sort backward), and the flick/scroll-wait thing begins all over again. I checked, and complaints about all the things people have disliked (like the horrid scroll times) have existed for years, so it appears YTM will likely remain as it is.

I am actually now using Apple Music. I really dislike Apple (company) for myself, and they used to be issue ridden for Windows/Android users. But, I must admit, it is working relatively well so far, and uploaded music works great as well (so far). Hoping they retain upload service, since most others have dropped it, or never had it. I love being able to upload scratch songs I am working on, and then play them back at any time, anywhere. Plus, to create album playlists, flowing from a stream-available album right into a non-stream-available album, or even creating my own fav tracks playlist with cuts from streamable, and stuff not available. Plus, even though Apple does not have as much available as GPM did, there is enough, and anything I miss, I will simply buy on CD, which I still do regularly, especially with bands I love (support your fav bands!), and even more so these days.

 

[PBC]

While not mentioned, I'm the only one in my circles that uses TIDAL. Reason I went with them is that it was initially created by artists for artists (Jay-Z).
They are the second highest royalty provider in the streaming service
One play is double that of Apple and triple that of Spotify. I used to do google music.

I like the loseless streaming and CD Masters when they have them. It's nice to listen to that through my monitors at home. Great app for both mobile and desktop. Creates radio stations and separate playlists to accommodate a wide range of listening styles and genres. A good home screen that keeps me informed of what's trending both globally and genre specific as well as new releases and ease-to-explore recommendations and new artists.

Cons: they don't have upload service which seems to be a requirement in this thread. Have a smaller library than that of Spotify, but I haven't found any missing artists except for Metallica (which could be a big deal). Subscription is pricier than others.

 

[Manurack]

So I know that I have dragged this thread through the dirt at this point on this forum.

But can anyone give me a reliable source to correctly transfer all of my music from YouTube Music or Google Play to Spotify?

Like I said, the one program I used added the most popular songs to my playlists and replaced the original songs and that annoys the fuck out of me.

 

[davemeistro]

I haven't actually tried this, but it looks like you can download all your Youtube Music uploads from Google here: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout?pli=1

I don't use Spotify so I don't know if bulk uploading your entire library is easy, but this is the only way I see to download your library from YTM without doing it on an individual, song by song basis

 

[groverj3]

I only used Google Play Music for the ability to upload my stuff. I guess I'm (a 31 year) old man who refuses to pay for subscriptions to listen to music. Never mind that the artists make less money than if you just buy their shit. I transferred my uploads to YouTube Music, and it's inferior but I guess it works.

I also hate Youtube Music, but because it doesn't organize stuff as Artist -> Album (by year) -> Songs. Click the artist and it just throws all their songs in a giant list, you have to find a song from the album you want, click the album's name, and NOW you can have only the songs from that album. I know that I guess people care less about listening to full albums now, but I want to most of the time, and some brogrammer at Google could certainly implement this shit.

 

[ThomasUV777]

These platforms has made us very reliant on them and I am guilty of this. Imaging having built your playlists and tracks only needing to transfer to another streaming platform. Good thing I found Musconvtool for this.

 

[Emperoff]

 

[mikah912]

Eh, for what it's worth...YouTube Music evolved into a pretty decent music platform in the past couple of years. I don't miss Google Play Music anymore, although I do miss that you can no longer buy albums through them. That really sucks.

That being said, if you're a significant consumer of YouTube video (I am, but that's pretty much 80-90 percent of what my wife watches), it doesn't make sense to pay for any other music platform because Google throws it in for free when you pay for YouTube Platinum (no ads!).

 

[c7spheres]

You could setup everything at home on your computer in highest quality and have playlists etc with something like VLC, create you're own remote access point/stream and use your computer remotely. Like creating your own streaming service. Then you pay nothing other than the fees to make it work and you can modifiy it at any time. Downside is computer is always on, but you can also access the rest of computer if wanted too. It's complex though and would take a lot of forethought and experimenting to get it how you want and working right. Maybe not worth the hassel. You could do the same concept via your own personal website. I just listen to .wavs on my computer mostly, remotely it's usb drves in the car otherwise a i'd use a .wav/.mp3 player if I needed too.

 

[zappatton2]

Man, I've gone full Kaczynski "cabin in the woods" to avoid giving streamers one thin dime. I can not abide the idea of ads playing while I'm listening to my albums. Things have gotten a little stone-age in my attempts at assembling playlists.

 

[zappatton2]

Joking aside, I'm not certain what benefits come from Youtube Music that I wouldn't get from plain old Youtube. I use the internet more to find music than to casually listen to it, and generally Youtube knows what I click, and tends to recommend interesting stuff. Curious what sets "Youtube Music" apart?

 

[mikah912]

Man, I've gone full Kaczynski "cabin in the woods" to avoid giving streamers one thin dime. I can not abide the idea of ads playing while I'm listening to my albums. Things have gotten a little stone-age in my attempts at assembling playlists.

But ads....don't play when you subscribe to YouTube Music....