How to download Google Play Music to your computer: a few good tips. Google Play Music came to Russia: instructions for connecting from Lifehacker Download google play music app

Google play Music is an excellent music storage service with up to 50,000 custom tracks. Its only drawback is that it plays songs exclusively through a web browser. Google Play Music Desktop Player is designed to solve this problem. The application allows you to play tracks without the participation of a browser, quickly find the necessary works by various criteria, and even scrobble Last.fm.

Capabilities:

  • playback of all songs added to the Play Music service;
  • support for playlists;
  • function of automatic selection of tracks;
  • scrobbling Last.fm;
  • track change notifications.

Principle of operation:

immediately after launching, the utility will offer to connect your account in the Google Media Library. After authorization, all purchased tracks, as well as downloaded music files, will become available. To add your own songs to the collection, use the Download Manager program.

The player interface is similar to the web version of the service. Thanks to Russian localization, it is very easy to understand the possibilities. Let's pay attention to the interesting function of automatic selection of tracks based on the song being played. To create an automatic playlist while playing a song, click on the icon in the form of three vertical dots and select the "Enable Automix" item.

Pros:

  • special function of the mini-player;
  • control by means of "hot keys";
  • hTML5 Audio standard support;
  • interface in Russian;
  • there are versions for Linux and MacOS.

Minuses:

  • the player is not suitable for playing local tracks;
  • no equalizer.

Google Play Music Desktop Player or GPMDP for short is a great tool to play your Google Play Music collection without a browser. The program has enough functions for comfortable listening to tracks.

Analogues:

  • Tomahawk is a powerful audio player that allows you to listen to the latest in the music industry;
  • AIMP is a functional player with a "light" interface.

In Russia. For 169 rubles a month you can get full access... The problem is that Google provides the ability to listen to music only from mobile devices or through a browser.
However, this does not suit many, for example to me. Therefore, in this article, we will consider possible "unofficial" ways to listen to music from Google Play Music.

So, we have a Raspberry Pi with installed server MPD. We want to be able to play remotely any music from our library in Google Play Music on this Raspberry Pi.

We do not consider the option of starting a vnc server with a running browser. I tried to run chromium and midori without X-server and window manager, but it still slows down a lot. The music.google.com web application is still quite heavy.

There is no official API for Google Play Music, but there is an excellent Unofficial-Google-Music-API written in Python on github. The author of this API Simon Weber recommends several projects using its API. Consider the ones that interest me:

Besides these projects, you can also find:

It is worth noting that all projects are written in Python. Below I will describe my experience with each of these projects.

thunner

Curses client. Runs music through mplayer. Sounds great, but doesn't work. To begin with, I had to switch to the branch in which the changes were made to work with latest version API, version from master is broken. But the music still only plays for a second, then switches to the next song. Actually, we can observe the following unresolved problem of All-Access Songs Not Playing, which means this is not only for me.

GMusicFS

FUSE file system... When mounting, we get the hierarchy of directories of our music library from Google Play Music in artists / format // plus cover.jpg is loaded. Well, the ability to have the entire music library in mp3 format in a directory is just fine, but there are a number of sad limitations.
As the author writes, this solution is only suitable for copying files to your computer or for playing with a simple player such as mplayer. Problems may occur when trying to play in more advanced players. Indeed, when trying to open a collection, even in a simple mocp, it starts to freeze, it is impossible to listen to music. When I try to specify a directory as a library for MPD, we get the opportunity to listen to music, but tags were not loaded for me, and listening to songs with the same name "Unknown" is certainly not an option. The author also notes the inability to play the song from a certain position.

You can install GMusicFS using pip, after installing the dependencies:

pip install github.com/terencehonles/fusepy/tarball/master
pip install github.com/simon-weber/Unofficial-Google-Music-API/tarball/develop
pip install github.com/EnigmaCurry/GMusicFS/tarball/master

Then you need to create a configuration file ~ / .gmusicfs with the following content:


username \u003d [email protected]
password \u003d your_password

And you can mount:

mkdir -p $ HOME / google_music
gmusicfs $ HOME / google_music

To unmount:

fusermount -u $ HOME / google_music

When copying music to your computer, all tags are loaded correctly. Playing with mplayer also works great. After updating the music library, you need to remount the file system.

GMusicProxy

The project description says the following: "Let" s stream Google Play Music using any media-player ".
This script allows you to receive m3u playlists or mp3 files by sending specially formed GET requests.

You can install it with the following command:

pip install github.com/diraimondo/gmusicproxy/tarball/master

To work, you need the device-id of one of the registered devices. You can get a list of these devices as follows:

GMusicProxy --email<адрес> --password<пароль> --list-devices

Create config ~ / .config / gmusicproxy.cfg:

email \u003d [email protected]
password \u003d my-secret-password
device-id \u003d 54bbd32a309a34ef

Launch:

Usage examples with mpc console client

curl -s "http: // localhost: 9999 / get_by_search? type \u003d album & artist \u003d Queen & title \u003d Greatest% 20Hits"\u003e
/var/lib/mpd/playlists/queen.m3u
mpc load queen
mpc play

Mpc clear
curl -s "http: // localhost: 9999 / get_new_station_by_search? type \u003d artist & artist \u003d Queen & num_tracks \u003d 100" |
grep -v ^ # | while read url; do mpc add "$ url"; done
mpc play

Examples of use with VLC

vlc "http: // localhost: 9999 / get_by_search? type \u003d album & artist \u003d Rolling% 20Stones & title \u003d tattoo & exact \u003d no"
curl -s "http: // localhost: 9999 / get_all_stations? format \u003d text & only_url \u003d yes" | sort -R | head -n1 | vlc -

A variety of requests are supported: getting songs, radio stations, playlists, ...
Of the minuses, it is worth noting that all these requests must be compiled by yourself, and also that tags are loaded only when a specific song is played.

play-pi

Django web front-end for music library access with MPD integration. I will just say that I had the same problem as with the thunner - only a second is played.

Unfortunately, Cantata does not connect.

conclusions

For copying music from Google Play Music in mp3 format is perfect. For playback can be used with plugin.

I settled on the fact that I run MPD and Mopidy at the same time on different ports and connect with different clients (Cantata and GMPC). MPD for local collection, Mopidy for Google Play Music.

Keep in mind that when using two-factor authentication, you need to create app passwords in your Google Account settings.

In this article, I want to tell you how I switched to using a music service from Google instead of listening to a collection of music on a computer using my favorite player. But first, a little digression. I listen to music all the time, at home, at work (I work mostly at home), on the way to a meeting or somewhere else, on flights, and so on. Everywhere. At the same time, at home, all the music is stored, of course, on the computer, collected for years, lovingly sorted into daddies, registered the correct tags, searched for album covers, in a word, everything is as expected. With a player for Windows, on which all this could be listened to, there have been several changes over the past 5-6 years. In the beginning I used WinAmp like most people in Russia with computers. Probably. Then I switched to Foobar, and not because of the sound quality, like many, but simply because at that time it was this player that made it possible to obtain a convenient tree structure of all music with folders, plus, there were many possibilities to change the appearance of the player. At one time, I even had iTunes as the main player, but since there is no worse player in the world (especially for those who store music in folders and are used to choosing music in folders, and not by searching or through categories), I quickly "jumped off" ... In the end, I settled on a strange, but, as it turned out, convenient for me personally, the JRiver Media Center player, in it you can set up autostart playback along with the launch of the player, work with folders, enable search and download of missing album covers from the network. I wrote all this so that you could understand - I really listen to music a lot and until recently could not imagine that I would suddenly abandon my collection and my convenient player on my computer in favor of Google Play Music. But that is what happened.

We have already written about the official launch of Google's music service in Russia and some of its features. In this article I will tell you about everything google capabilities Play Music, pros and cons, and why I now use this online service.

Subscription

The most important thing about Google Play Music and the main reason why the service is so convenient and useful is the subscription. If you do not activate the monthly subscription, then the cost of a track is about 15 rubles, and an album - 150-200 rubles. The prices may be normal, but not very familiar to us. I want to say that it is one thing to buy physical media for that amount and another to buy several megabytes of music. In Russia, they are not yet accustomed to this. And that's where subscription comes in.

If you subscribe before mid-November, you will have to pay 169 rubles monthly, if after mid-November - 189 rubles. What do you get for a monthly fee of 170 or 190 rubles?

  1. The ability to listen online to all the tracks presented in Google Play Music (over 18 million tracks)
  2. The ability to download an unlimited number of tracks to a computer or any smartphone and listen to them offline, without an Internet connection
  3. The ability to listen to radio stations based on your preferences by music genre, album and so on
  4. The ability to upload to the cloud, then listen online from a smartphone, tablet, computer or laptop anywhere with the Internet, up to 20,000 tracks

The last point is also subject to the use of the service without a subscription. But the whole point is that if you need to buy tracks without a subscription, then by subscribing and paying a monthly fee once a month, you get all these tracks for the entire subscription period for free. And you can download them to any smartphone in any quantity, it's true.

Interface and features

In my opinion, the main drawback of the service now is the lack of a client for Windows, Mac, Linux. That is, you need to listen to music in a browser window and, accordingly, a number of minor drawbacks are associated with this: you cannot control playback from the keyboard, as in any local player, there are no sound settings, there are no interface presentation settings, and much more. However, the browser version of the service is already quite suitable for permanent use.


In the service window on the left there is a small menu with several important sections, this is the "Home" page, where the last listened tracks are displayed, and there is a button "You will like it", by clicking it, you will turn on the playback of the tracks selected by the service taking into account your preferences. There is "My Music Library", which stores the tracks you downloaded to the cloud and to devices. There is “Obzor”, a kind of library, here you can search for any tracks in different genres and subgenres.



The "Radio" section allows you to listen to music similar to a specific artist or genre. Here, the system collects the selections recommended to you based on the information collected by the service about what you are listening to. Accordingly, the more time you use Google Play Music, the more accurate this system will work and the more suitable tracks it will collect into collections. I will say to myself, I have already found several interesting collections here, and if you are listening to a selection and you don’t like a track in it, you can give it 1 (on a five-point rating scale), the track will be excluded from the selection, and this rating will be counted system when compiling future selections.



The playlist screen of a specific artist also contains recommendations for artists playing in a similar style, as well as albums and compilations of the artist, of course.



You can view a list of tracks in an album or collection, or turn on full-screen cover art. True, the quality of the covers in Google Play Music is not very good yet, and on the monitor with high resolution it doesn't look very good.





In the settings, you can go to the "Laboratory" and install a couple of add-ons there. It is hoped that in the future there will be a large number of quality add-ons for the service, as for Gmail, for example. So far I found only one useful thing there - notifications about playing tracks in the system tray (for Windows).


For windows systems there is a special client with which you can upload tracks from your computer to the cloud. It works very simply - specify the player from the database of which you want to download tracks or specific folders on the computer, then the process of uploading them to the server begins.






Google Play Music on your smartphone

An application for smartphones based on Android resembles a service in a browser window in its capabilities. The main disadvantage here is exactly the same as on a PC - you can listen to music, even downloaded to the device, only with the help of this program, you will not see these tracks in any other player. Another drawback so far is the impossibility of choosing a location for downloading tracks, that is, all this is loaded into a pre-defined folder in internal memory devices. For smartphones with a small amount of built-in memory and flash cards, this disadvantage is especially critical.

Conclusion

In my opinion, with the arrival of Google Play Music in Russia, two services will have a very difficult time at some point - firstly, it is Yandex.Music, and secondly, free music at social network "In contact with". Yandex.Music and Google Play Music are in many ways similar - both services with a subscription allow you to listen to a huge amount of music online. And yet, Yandex's music database is more modest, for some it doesn't matter, but I, for example, immediately ran into this minus. If in Google Play Music I find all the albums of my favorite band Anathema, then in Yandex.Music there are only two albums. In terms of capabilities, Yandex's service is also weaker so far - there is no such system of recommendations and "radio", it all looks simpler and not so nice and clear. As for free tracks on the Vkontakte network, it is obvious that sooner or later the shop will be closed, and then millions of users who are used to listening to music online will have to look for new sources. Someone will find free analogues, and someone decides to pay 100-200 rubles per month for a high-quality service from Google, Yandex or someone else.

And most importantly, it seems to me that Google Play Music has already become a full-fledged replacement for the music collection on a computer for everyone who loves to listen to music and listens to it constantly, but at the same time is not too picky about the quality of tracks, does not collect everything in lossless formats and does not has super-acoustics, amplifier and other things for "real clear sound". That is why for me Google Play Music has already become such a replacement for music on a computer's hard drive.

Artem Lutfullin ()

Hello IdeaFox friends!

Quite recently, an event happened that our music lovers were waiting for - in Russia it officially started google service Play Music.

As a passionate music lover, I also decided to test this service, and share my impressions. There are many advantages, but not without problems, as they say.

What is Google Play Music?

It's newfangled cloud servicewhich allows you to access millions of licensed music tracks from mobile phone and with ordinary computer.

Of course, first of all, this project was created as a service for mobile devices for android, not for PC.

The project is convenient, interesting, but at the moment terribly slows down... I hope these brakes will disappear over time, and I associate this phenomenon with the overload of servers and the influx of first users.

Why did you like it?

I have repeatedly written on my blog that I respect copyrights and use only licensed software and music. Here, for a very reasonable fee, access to a huge music library is given.

There is no need to "rob" discs, convert them to MP3, upload them to the phone memory, etc., etc.

Of course, you can take the time and transfer my collection from my computer and CD to my phone ... But to be honest, I have neither time nor desire for this. I just want to turn on the phone, press a couple of buttons, and listen to my favorite music without any problems with flash drives and other wires.

How much is?

At the moment, they give 30 days of a free period, after which the monthly subscription fee \u003d RUB 169 per month.

Considering that the cost of an ordinary album in a store can go up to 1000 rubles. and above, then we can say that such a price is simply divine. But you need to understand that to use GPM you will need Internet access and it is better to connect via Wi-Fi or connect the option of unlimited access to the network. Now this option costs from 3 rubles per day.

I have this option connected a long time ago.

It is important to understand that for 169 rubles / month you will be able to listen to music from the cloud, but don't download... If you want to download, you will have to buy separately. The cost of one album is about 100-200 rubles. But you can buy individual tracks for 10-20 rubles.

In principle, no one bothers to upload previously purchased music to the Google Play Music cloud, but no more than 20,000 tracks.

How to install?

Go to Play Market and install :-)

Please note that until November 15th there is a 30 day free period. This period is more than enough to make a decision on the further use of the service.

After clicking on the "Try" button, you will see the following message:

Don't forget to cancel your subscription if the quality / price doesn't suit you. Otherwise, the monthly fee will be charged from your card!

Main window of GPM. A very simple interface where you can't get lost :)

In the search bar, we are looking for the desired song. I just wanted to listen to “I Feel Good” by the great James Brown. Brilliant song :)

The track you like can be added to the playlist so that you don't have to search for it again and again later :-).

For fun, I bought the track “I feel good” for 10 rubles!

How to set up Google Play Music?

I show screenshots of the service settings. Everything is clear, I will not rassosolit :-)

This is where you can turn off your subscription.

I also adjusted the equalizer to my liking

I didn't touch anything here.

How to upload your own music from computer to Google Play Music?

It is clear that there is no high-speed Internet in a deep forest, and you want to collect MUSHROOMS with psychedelic music :-)

For such cases, you can upload your own tracks to the cloud and to your phone. Moreover, synchronization will happen automatically for all your devices running Android.

That is, once your collection has been uploaded to the cloud, and it will automatically appear on your tablet or phones. Naturally, you must use the same account google entry on your devices.

So what needs to be done:

1. We go from a regular computer to Google Play.

Enter your data accountthat you use on your smartphone!

And click on the headphone icon.

2. Click on the button "Replenish the library"

3. We are offered to install a program to upload our music collection to the cloud.

After installation, we see a simple download manager called Music Manager.

Most owners of android smartphones actively use Google Play to buy and listen to licensed music. It is convenient and fast on your smartphone. At the same time, many users ask the question whether it is possible to download Google Play Music. Unlike iTunes, the service from Google cannot be downloaded to a computer in the form of a regular program, however, users can easily download music from Google Play to themselves on personal Computer... Standard functions allow you to do this.

Why download songs

Music service from "Google" has a wide functionality, user-friendly interface, while it is completely free. A significant drawback is the inability to listen to music without. Thus, all your purchases become unavailable. For this reason, it becomes necessary download to computer all tracks from Google Play Music . By doing this, you do not have to go into the browser every time and turn on the music library to listen. You just need to run the song on your computer.

If the song hasn't been purchased yet

You can download your favorite tracks only if they have already been purchased. If your music library is empty, then, of course, there will be simply nothing to download. To buy a music track you like, you need to follow these steps:

Only then will you be able to download songs to your computer. You can do this either one song at a time, or download the entire music library completely. We will talk about this in more detail later.

Download the desired song to your computer

Once you have bought all the music tracks you need, you will be able to download them. To download purchased music from Play Music, you need to follow these steps;


Be careful, as you can download each track only 1 or 2 times. After that, you can easily listen to your favorite songs even offline. The file is downloaded in mp3 format, so you can listen to it not only on a computer, but also on various mobile devices... Also, users who have downloaded or listened to a track once are not entitled to request a refund for the song.

How to download the entire music library

The above method is convenient only if you need to download one or several songs. However, if your music library contains hundreds of songs, downloading each one individually is extremely tedious and inefficient. Google experts have foreseen this problem, so they created a special download manager, which you can download on the official website.

To use this program, follow the steps of the following instructions:


After that, the manager will start the download. The program allows you to download all the songs to your computer in just a few minutes.

There is an alternative option for users chrome browser... The developers have created a special add-on, thanks to which you can just as quickly download songs from the music library to your computer. To do this, follow these steps:


First, go to the "Experimental functions" submenu in the browser settings themselves. You need to include the appropriate google item Play Music. The app also allows you to quickly add tracks to your music library, after which you can listen to them on your mobile device.