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Re:Spotify adds 1M unique listeners in India in less than a ... by giancarlostoro on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @07:41AM (#19310128)
I used to pay for GrooveShark (which clearly was sketchy lol) and then Spotify, since I subscribed to Google All Music Access I have never had to pirate music just to get access to it. I can cache all the music I like (download it for offline listening) and it works on my iPad too. I wish they had an official desktop client for offline sync, but Google seems allergic to non-web desktop solutions.

I try to avoid getting sucked into Google's Ecosystem, but GAMA is pretty damn good. Sadly I don't know what the situation for GAMA looks like outside of the USA.

Edit:

But my point is, I hated Spotify, I still found myself forced to "acquire" music. This is the digital age, sell me digital music I fully own. People who don't want to pay for music will not pay for it no matter what you do. At least with Google when I buy music I can sync it to my local machine, but with GAMA I don't have to. The other upside is I get no ads on YouTube since I got grandfathered into YouTube Premium. Yes, I know, AdBlock, but I got grandfathered in to no ads, why would I care about AdBlock?

Re:Spotify adds 1M unique listeners in India in less than a ... by tokyodude on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @12:42PM (#19312384)
Is Google Music the same as Youtube Music because I signed up a 2-3 weeks ago and have found it to be horrid at finding new music. No matter what I do it keeps trying to sneak in popular tracks into recommendations. I think of the 200 to so songs I've gone through I've clicked dislike on 185 and it still keeps pouring in the crap. As an example I put in "Anja Garbarek" and picked "Radio" and it played Maroon 5 ?!?. I put in "BodyRockers" and it played rap and EDM.
Re:Spotify adds 1M unique listeners in India in less than a ... by dragonwriter on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @12:50PM (#19312443)
> Is Google Music the same as Youtube Music

No, Google Play Music (All Access or otherwise) is not the same thing as YouTube Music, though there have been reports and indications that YT Music may be planned to eventually replace GPM.

Re:Spotify adds 1M unique listeners in India in less than a ... by rch on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @07:52AM (#19310171)
I've enjoyed my Google music subscription for years as well, but I think it's pretty shady that lately they keep trying to bundle in a free YouTube subscription.

I still buy movies, and I have a fair bit of purchased music from before the subscription, so I'll be more than annoyed if I end up with my media library sitting in YouTube Red if they try to converge the products. Spotify would be high on a short list of alternatives if that happens.

Re:Spotify adds 1M unique listeners in India in less than a ... by dragonwriter on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @12:53PM (#19312470)
> I've enjoyed my Google music subscription for years as well, but I think it's pretty shady that lately they keep trying to bundle in a free YouTube subscription

Replacing GPM with YTMusic, unless the latter is updated to support everything, including personal music import and export, that the former does would be shady.

Giving me free YT Premium along with the GPM All Access I was already paying for at no additional cost is not, however, shady.

Re:Spotify adds 1M unique listeners in India in less than a ... by jimmydddd on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @09:23AM (#19310670)
@rch -- What's the shady bundling? I haven't been paying attention. I think I'm in the same position as you -- early Google music adopter, previously uploaded my legacy mp3 library to Google music, and get ad free Y-tube.
Re:Spotify adds 1M unique listeners in India in less than a ... by giancarlostoro on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @07:59AM (#19310200)
I think if it does happen I may not bother anymore, it'll just save me $14 a month (I pay for my wife to have it too, apparently I can add 2 other family members or something at no extra cost).
Re:Spotify adds 1M unique listeners in India in less than a ... by smashingfiasco on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @09:30AM (#19310717)
> This is the digital age, sell me digital music I fully own.

From what I understand, digital downloads from iTunes and the likes are basically just a perpetual license?

It won’t get you new stuff, but if you’re trying to fill your back catalog in, you can’t beat the price of goodwill.

Re:Spotify adds 1M unique listeners in India in less than a ... by dragonwriter on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @12:47PM (#19312425)
> Google All Music Access

nitpick, but it's “Google Play Music All Access”