Does anyone use Plex?

[Josh]

I've been a long time user of Google Play Music. I pay a subscription so I can get ad free streaming and upload music to the library. GPM is being phased out for YouTube Music Premium or whatever it's called and I'm pretty sure I don't want that. I don't want Spotify either.

I've heard Plex is an alternative, but don't know much about it. Can anyone vouch for it, or give me another choice?

[Radiobuzz]

To be perfectly honest I never heard about Plex in the content of being similar to Spotify or GPM. I know about it being sort of a very feature-heavy media player with the possibility of streaming via a paid fee (only on the US) or some other not very legal ways. Spotify doesn't have any importing option as far as I'm aware. From what I read, Plex gets its music streaming from Tidal, so in any case you should investigate that directly. I would go with Deezer though.

[Josh]

To be perfectly honest I never heard about Plex in the content of being similar to Spotify or GPM. I know about it being sort of a very feature-heavy media player with the possibility of streaming via a paid fee (only on the US) or some other not very legal ways. Spotify doesn't have any importing option as far as I'm aware. From what I read, Plex gets its music streaming from Tidal, so in any case you should investigate that directly. I would go with Deezer though.

Thanks! I don't need much more than a streaming music player that lets me upload stuff from my library. I also need something that's works on a Linux machine. It looks like Deezer has a browser based player, but the desktop app is only for Windows and Mac. It still might be a solution as I just use GPM in a browser.

[turquoise70]

Thanks for starting this thread; I'm also a longtime happy user of GPM and I've found great utility in it. I'm pissed Google is killing it off, but they always do that to their better applications eventually.

I myself mostly use GPM on android to stream from my phone to my car, so... I'm gonna need something I can do THAT with.

[Radiobuzz]

Currently downloading 28 GB of music from GPM, as I got an email yesterday about them shutting the service in a couple of months, so this thread came to mind. I think I'm coming back to the old portable mp3 player, I'll have to search for useful options.

[PSareT]

Polyplex is an instrument in Native Instruments Reaktor. Good stuff!

[Josh]

Google is really pissing me off. In lieu of finding a replacement streaming service with the ability to upload my library, I decided to check out migrating to YouTubeMusic. The first thing you'll see when you do this is a message that in order to migrate over, you have to start a channel under your Google account that follows you around every Google app you might use. There's also the obligatory privacy policy that is probably a thousand pages of legalese that in all likelihood is a no privacy policy. Why do I need to start a YouTube channel if I have no intention of posting content? You also need to create a channel if you want to comment on someone else's YouTube video. Again, why? So, it looks like I'm sticking with GPM until they pull the plug, which will happen very soon. Then what, I don't know.

As I said in my OP, I pay a subscription for GPM as well as for Google Drive. It's not like I'm using their services for free. I'm not asking for something for nothing. I just want to keep what I already have.

Ugh. I really wish I had the time and resources to set up my own cloud server.

[Twoist]

Concur re. the move from GPM to YTM. It's shit. I really liked having my self-ripped stuff available in a universally accessible app that was easy to navigate - and the free GPM was perfect for that. I don't want random detritus and clutter getting in amongst my music depending on what I choose to listen or watch in actual YouTube. Ffffs.

[Radiobuzz]

I'm refloating this thread to say that I'm currently uploading my music to a service called iBroadcast, which is free to use and seems pretty straightforward. The only downside is that on the free version the files stream at 128 kbps, I didn't catch that before starting to upload everything. In any case it functions as a good cloud backup.

[Radiobuzz]

Sorry for the double post. While I was trying to see how much the premium features cost on iBroadcast I read they're not actually charging right now because they're still working on said features. This means you can upgrade to premium for free, and they will downgrade the account when they launch the premium service for everyone. So I don't know if this will be useful forever but for the immediate future I'm good with this.

EDIT: It should be noted that the "premium feature" not only lets you broadcast at better kbps, they actually let you stream the original file uploaded to them, so it's pretty awesome for those of us with WAVs and FLACs.