That time is now!

https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/9716522?hl=en

There are a number of self-hosted music streaming servers. Some quick googling shows Ampache, Mopidy, mStream, and Airsonic as the four biggest ones. Some of them have apps for Android/iOS, some support the Subsonic protocol which has a number of compatible mobile apps. And of course also a website interface.

Put it on an old computer / raspberry pi in a closet, or on a cloud VM. Domain name is <=$12/yr and many providers let you do DDNS via their API.

YT Music is just youtube with non-music filtered out. It is awful. My Play Music playlists are not there (just youtube playlists - see what I mean about being YT with a skin). I never ever use it.

I am working in Google Play Music clone because I have exactly the same problem, I am planning to launch a close beta in a couple of weeks, If you don't mind I can send you a link to try out the beta.

By the way, no landing page for the moment, I just bought the domain yesterday(musicbucket.cloud)

> If not, is there any other free service where I could upload my MP3 collection to, with an app for mobile which would sync the data between mobile devices?

Not free, but Apple Music allows you to do that. I believe Spotify has that feature as well.

Have you considered setting up NAS for your MP3 collection and streaming with Subsonic or VLC? I've never done this so maybe it's more complicated than I understand, but that's where I would be looking first.

I self host Subsonic, it is excellent. If you don't want to pay any money there are free forks of it as well.

I have two different and excellent apps on iOS but there are Android apps too.

> the moment they allow me to upload my MP3-collection

I would not hold your breath for this. The holdover MP3 collector is such a small minority that no mainstream company is going to consider them from here on out.

> is there any other free service where I could upload my MP3 collection to

If there was, why would you waste your time? Either it's not going to be free or it's going to disappear.

The problem is that some bands were never signed to a label, broke up before spotify got big, or for some other reason don't exist on any of the popular streaming sites. The problem is getting smaller as time goes on, but it still exists. I can self-host something like Ampache or Plex or something, but then I don't get any sort of discovery features, and I have to go to a totally different platform to listen to new artists.

GPM was nice in that it merged the cloud music with your own collection, but I'm pretty resigned to the fact that I'm going to lose that functionality when they finally shut it down.

> The problem is that some bands were never signed to a label, broke up before spotify got big, or for some other reason don't exist on any of the popular streaming sites.

For Spotify, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. that's not a problem.

Are people going to cancel their accounts because they can't listen to a very small subset of music? Probably but it's going to be a tiny minority of users that's inconsequential to their bottom line.

That was my Google Play Music use case as well. About a year ago I set up a plex server on my NAS and bulk downloaded my GPM library onto it (which to google’s credit was easy to do). Now I have them on my own hardware, and accessible on the go with the Plex app. It’s a better experience for video than audio, but it’s totally serviceable.

There had been murmurs for a long time of Google Play Music going away, so I moved off ASAP. Looks like that was a good call.

That was my move as well. I already had a decently sized NAS with Plex that was accessible anywhere. The music experience through GPM and Spotify is better, but at least I can manage the music myself and I never have to worry about it going away (or some weird licensing or exclusivity issue not allowing me to listen to something I want to listen to). And my bootlegs, b-sides, remixes, and rare tracks that you can't get on streaming services is preserved too.

> "If there was, why would you waste your time? Either it's not going to be free or it's going to disappear."

Because voting with your wallet works.

If it's free you're not voting with your wallet...