Help Google music storage and naming

[Jay3]

To the OP, that's how Google Music works. It's a cloud based service that gives a coded name to every song. The correct name will always appear in the app, but not on the raw file. This is true for for offline music as well. The cloud server needs to be able to manipulate the files and move them around, and it assigns a unique name to each song when it's made a part of the Google music collection.

You'd be better off just keeping your music collection on a computer at home, and think of the phone as only a listening portal to music, not a file manager for copying, etc.

 

[Jay3]

Is there a way to "mass pin" everything?? Also, the music app is pulling sound files from some of my games, arghh

I assign every song to at least one playlist. Either a genre, or one I have called "Current Rotation," or at a minimum one called "Available Offline."

I check the box on all playlists as "Available Offline."

There's some "junk music" I have that's not in a playlist. Which is fine to just stay in the cloud.

 

[ymDroid]

Can anyone tell me the exact file in my phone where my "pinned for off-line" songs are stored?


I'd like the use them to make ringtones, but I can't find them on the phone.


Thanks in advance...

 

[alostpacket]

In case anyone is wondering this is Google's terrible DRM. It's doesn't protect the files from piracy, but just annoys the users. Additionally, it goes against their own "Data Liberation" policy ( the Data Liberation Front )

Another side effect here is that this also causes major problems for third party music apps making them rescan the folders and not even letting them use the same playlists.

I urge you all to down rank Google Music and report this as the reason (if you agree of course).


Please don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Google, but Google Music is a terrible app and an affront to your rights to use your own data.


(this is just my own opinion of course/not that of AF/Phandroid)

 

[JunBringer]

Can anyone tell me the exact file in my phone where my "pinned for off-line" songs are stored?


I'd like the use them to make ringtones, but I can't find them on the phone.


Thanks in advance...

sdcard/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music/ <-- Copied from above post


btw don't get your hopes up about using those files for anything but playing in the Google Music app. As dude above here said, they do some odd things with the files.

 

[Roroco]

In case anyone is wondering this is Google's terrible DRM. It's doesn't protect the files from piracy, but just annoys the users. Additionally, it goes against their own "Data Liberation" policy ( the Data Liberation Front )

Another side effect here is that this also causes major problems for third party music apps making them rescan the folders and not even letting them use the same playlists.

I urge you all to down rank Google Music and report this as the reason (if you agree of course).


Please don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Google, but Google Music is a terrible app and an affront to your rights to use your own data.


(this is just my own opinion of course/not that of AF/Phandroid)

I mean.. I see what you are saying, but Google Music allows you to upload your entire music collection to the cloud to stream on any device you want. I get DRM sucks, but - outside of Amazon with smaller limits - no other company gives you this service for free with no questions asked.

Complaining about DRM in Google Music is like complaining that the Dalai Lama farted in front of you while helping you reach total conscientiousness.

 

[alostpacket]

I mean.. I see what you are saying, but Google Music allows you to upload your entire music collection to the cloud to stream on any device you want. I get DRM sucks, but - outside of Amazon with smaller limits - no other company gives you this service for free with no questions asked.

Complaining about DRM in Google Music is like complaining that the Dalai Lama farted in front of you while helping you reach total conscientiousness.

First let me say +1 for the fart joke (I'm a sucker for those) and the Dali Lama was just icing.

However, it's more than just complaints about DRM. A lot of these decisions they made are serious problems:

- They do not follow the Android API for storing Music and Playlists. They don't store the data in the MediaStore which is where they tell developers to look for media information. This effectively kills a lot of 3rd party music apps. It also renders an entire portion of Android completely useless.

- Google Music takes control of playlists from the device if you edit them in Google Music, preventing any other app from even looking at the playlist. There are ways to "hack" the music files out Google's "hidden" storage, but not playlists. This effective kills almost all 3rd party playlist apps.

- Google Music is now the default Android music player. There is no more AOSP player shipped. (say as opposed to Email vs Gmail). This is actually why Cyanogen is building his own Music player.

- Also, it's important to remember they aren't offering an online storage locker as an altruistic give-away to the Android community. They do it because they can then sell you music into your library. So while the Dali Lama was a funny comparison, it's not really the best analogy.

Is DRM sometimes worth the trade-off for services? Sure -- I use Steam. But Google built an OS, then devs came along and built great apps on top of that, now Google is shutting them out to some extent. Is it to be expected? yeah probably. Will some third party apps survive? definitely.

But it doesn't change the fact that they designed the system in a manner that has a severe negative impact on a lot of apps. And there really isnt a reason they had to other than to lock people into the eco system. This is a very "Apple" move. Again though, don't get me wrong, I'm normally quite the Google/Android fan-boy (as you can imagine), but what they did here stinks of anti-competitiveness.

 

[darkuni]

Once again, I will pimp Subsonic. Google Music without the BS or DRM - and with video.