Google Music & 3rd Party Players

[Gogster]

Hi all,

I have Google Music installed on my Nexus 7 & Nexus 4 and have uploaded 2.5k tracks to the Google Music 'cloud'.

On my Nexus 4, as a test, I have pinned 4 albums to be kept locally on the device.

Using PowerAmp I cannot see the albums, in fact PowerAmp doesn't find any music on the device at all.

I've used ES File Explorer and navigated to /sdcard/Android/data/com.google.android.music but the folder is empty.

I assume Google Music hides the tracks for some copy protection reason, which is mildly annoying.

Could anyone advise on my options here, is it the case that device needs rooting?

Cheers.

 

[Gogster]

Ok, a bit more reading, it looks like Google Music when you select to "keep music on your device" or pinning it, moves it to a folder that is not available to be browsed or searched by 3rd party music apps.

Some developers had created apps that moved the list into a navigable folder, this was consequently removed from the App Store. I guess Google Music are under pressure from the RIAA to stop music sharing from the cloud, typical naive approach.

I assume rooting your device is the only way to circumvent this restriction or stop using the Google Cloud for now and just copy the music from your PC...

 

[Tim K]

Yeah. It was previously stored on sdcard. Seems like on my galaxy nexus it is now stored in data/data/com.data.android.music/files/music
Which requires root to access. You'd need a 3rd party player that has root access to that folder.

 

[OverByter]

Ok, a bit more reading, it looks like Google Music when you select to "keep music on your device" or pinning it, moves it to a folder that is not available to be browsed or searched by 3rd party music apps.

Some developers had created apps that moved the list into a navigable folder, this was consequently removed from the App Store. I guess Google Music are under pressure from the RIAA to stop music sharing from the cloud, typical naive approach.

I assume rooting your device is the only way to circumvent this restriction or stop using the Google Cloud for now and just copy the music from your PC...

It's beyond naive because it has nothing to do with cloud based sharing, the damn files are physically on your device.