Google Drive/Dropbox music source coming next build?

[milklover12]

As the post above says. Tried of copying music to my storage from Drive

[andrewilley]

Please vote for that feature.

Andre

[milklover12]

The poll is closed. I wanted to make sure if MAXMP will add this feature in the next build

[andrewilley]

54 minutes ago, milklover12 said:

The poll is closed. I wanted to make sure if MAXMP will add this feature in the next build

Not very likely in the near future builds, as Chromecast won out as the next requested major feature. I would hope it may appear at some point in the future though.

Andre

[alanwade70]

On 3/15/2019 at 10:03 AM, andrewilley said:

Not very likely in the near future builds, as Chromecast won out as the next requested major feature. I would hope it may appear at some point in the future though.

Andre

Me too!

[AbramYetman7]

Pardon the old man grumbling, but who needs to store music in the cloud when Spotify and Apple Music exist? Where do you get these tracks and why? I'm wondering, maybe my worldview isn't enough to use Dropbox for a broader purpose. I registered Dropbox storage to keep my documents safe. I chose between Google Drive or Dropbox, but hundreds of family photos have already been uploaded to the GD, and I don’t want to mix content. Moreover, I was convinced by this article https://blog.coupler.io/what-is-dropbox-security/. How do YOU use Dropbox?

[MotleyG]

7 minutes ago, AbramYetman7 said:

Pardon the old man grumbling, but who needs to store music in the cloud when Spotify and Apple Music exist?

A couple of reasons come to mind. Those services often do not have a truly lossless service, or come at a cost that wouldn't be necessary if you already have a copy of the same music that you have already purchased. And more importantly, there are often titles that some or all of these service providers do not have rights to. And since many newer devices have removed the option to add external uSD card storage, the cloud may be your next best solution. Of course this does add the potential cost for data if your package doesn't include enough to cover your usage.

[AbramYetman7]

...

[MotleyG]

17 minutes ago, AbramYetman7 said:

Where do you get these tracks and why?

From an extensive CD and vinyl library that I have collected over the last 40+ years in my case. I'm sure this is similar for many others as well. Why buy again what you have already paid for?

[andrewilley]

@MotleyG  Same here, I have a huge collection of audio files, varying from rips from my CD/DVD collection, radio shows, concert recordings, theme park audio, etc. Including some quite esoteric stuff.

If you can find me one single streaming service that has everything in my collection, and 100% guarantees that they will never remove any existing items from their service, then I'll happily sign up. If not, my music is where I know I can always find it, and where I can play it on any device of my choice, with or without an internet connection.

Andre

[MotleyG]

1 minute ago, andrewilley said:

...with or without an internet connection

And yet another benefit! Air and out of country travel are certainly not ideal for streaming either.

[SHADOW-XIII]

Just wanted to highlight playing from Google Drive should be doable. 

You can see https://musicsync.ashishb.net or https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.doubleTwist.cloudPlayer - which is doing exactly that

I would love to see Poweramp to be able to do the same.

Edited July 18, 2022 by SHADOW-XIII

[ScarletNeko]

I personally would rather have option to connect to a lan storage (instead of things like gdrive for example) in some better and more solid way, such as a more complete/polished implementation of smb or ftp connectivity for example. The way we can do it now is pretty squishy, tags and pictures won't load and you can't seek, a remote controlled icecast stream works better but the setup is pretty bonkers and it comes with its own limitations.

But any advance on this area is interesting to follow

[SHADOW-XIII]

Maybe an option to do it via plugins? 

ie. a plugin would be responsible handling the source of files (ie. connecting, authentication, crawling through folders, caching etc) and then it would be passing the music file, ie. mp3 (steam/file?) to Poweramp to play,
or plugin would be passing playlist/queue to Poweramp and Poweramp would be requesting from plugin the file/stream on playlist/queue change

[Corey Harrold]

Cloud Support is needed and would make this the best media player on the android market. It's been 3 years since adding chrome cast? I think it's about time we get the next major feature in Cloud support. Google Drive, Drop Box, ect.

[Paolo Diawatan]

I've been using Poweramp since 2013 or earlier, still use an older phone with an sd card slot mainly for my music library. Unfortunately, its life is ending soon. My next phone might be one without a slot. I have my collection on my Dropbox. Hoping cloud support will be available soon, or maybe it is already? I don't frequently visit our forums.

[andrewilley]

You can sort of do it now for some storage types by mapping an external storage to a locatimn on your device’s storage.

But it'd be very slow and unwieldy for large collections or from commercial sites, as Poweramp would need to scan the tags from every remote file into its local music database.

Andre

[MotleyG]

3 hours ago, Paolo Diawatan said:

I've been using Poweramp since 2013 or earlier, still use an older phone with an sd card slot mainly for my music library. Unfortunately, its life is ending soon. My next phone might be one without a slot. I have my collection on my Dropbox. Hoping cloud support will be available soon, or maybe it is already? I don't frequently visit our forums.

There are still some good Android devices being released with SD cards and even headphone jacks. If a large library is a priority for you, I’d consider that to be an important factor for your shopping list. Motorola is one I have been looking at. 

[Paolo Diawatan]

Thanks for the comments. I'd say that I became less techy than a few years ago so I may follow MotleyG's idea. I was looking at a flip found when I realized the sd problem.

[maxmp]

We can’t just add cloud storages, such as Drive, to Poweramp and expect the same behavior for tracks from these storages. Poweramp has a Library filled with track tags/metadata. To do so, tag pre-reading is required (scanning). This won’t work for cloud services for any reasonable library size (for example, 1k songs).

I’ve seen two approaches for players which support cloud storages:

- just show file lists as is and only scan tags during playback. So no any library features are available for cloud tracks.

- pre-scan or match user tracks using own servers. Library features are all there + some extras are possible. These players are coming with a subscription fee as servers are not free.

If you know some other example of cloud storage playback implementation - please let me know. 

[andrewilley]

@maxmp Yes, I think the only way it could work would be to allow the user to add extra items to the Library Categories list - e.g. "Google Drive", or "Dropbox'". Tapping on one would initially have to ask for the user's credentials (which could be saved) and a root folder location, and then it would open a file explorer style view to that particular online storage location showing the subfolders and files available, with the ability to drill down to see more content.

I guess there could be a List Options setting to allow PA to optionally background parse through the contents of files as soon as a folder is opened, looking for tag info to replace the displayed filenames - in much the same way that the current Library screen does background online searches for cover art after you open a new view.

But it certainly won't be as pretty or nicely displayed as the current local Library content, it would basically be a list of streamable files independent of the main local Library database.

Andre

 

[fluffy82]

On 7/18/2022 at 3:36 PM, AbramYetman7 said:

Pardon the old man grumbling, but who needs to store music in the cloud when Spotify and Apple Music exist?

I have about 900GB of audio files on my pc, synced with Google Drive (my desktop app doesn't allow library storage in the cloud, and it serves as a back-up so I'm fine with that).

Doing a random test of 100 albums, I found that a whopping 67 (!) of them were not available on Spotify. I also have playlists on Spotify, where half of the tracks have suddenly become greyed out over the years, with the message "album not available", whil it used to be.

Spotify is way too incomplete and unreliable to manage my music.

 

Also: having your own digital copies rather than a streaming platform, makes browsing so much easier. I have 10x more parameters to search with, all able to be combined to narrow the search (with over 100.000 files that's a necessity). Spotify is great if you just want to listen randomly to a pop singer. Not to manage your collection and easily find what you want.

[andrewilley]

@fluffy82 I fully agree with you.

I would will be happy with a streaming service when it provides:

• Instant (no buffering) access to my whole music, TV and film collection
• Available from any location - even without a live data connection
• 100% guaranteed that all my required content will still be there tomorrow and in ten years' time - nothing vanishing due to licence changes, whims, or tax dodges
• Use a single unified interface, with the same look & feel and command/control process for every individual piece of content

Still waiting for all four of those though.

Andre

[maxmp]

I would add that I'm actively looking into the ways to implement server-less approach to cloud storages for Poweramp. We don't want to go the server-enabled solution here to avoid all that server related infrastructure problems, but server-less approach probably won't be as good as server-enabled solutions, where some intermediate server can scan your storage, categorize songs, and provide resulting library instantly to a player.

This feature will be added to the "next features" voting soon.

[fluffy82]

8 hours ago, andrewilley said:

@fluffy82 I fully agree with you.

I would will be happy with streaming when it provides:

• Instant (no buffering) access to my whole music, TV and film collection
• Available from any location - even without a live data connection
• 100% guaranteed that all my required content will still be there tomorrow and in ten years' time - nothing vanishing due to licence changes, whims, or tax dodges
• Use a single unified interface, with the same look & feel and command/control process for every individual piece of content

Still waiting for all four of those though.

Andre

My thoughts on your demands...

• instant playing: every streaming service (including Spotify, Netfix,...) needs some degree of buffering; it should be kept to the bare minimum though, so it's barely noticeable, but streaming without buffer is not possible
• no data connection: I don't see how that is technically even possible; if your player is in a different location from your database, there will always be data transfer, which requires a data connection; whether it's an online cloud service or your NAS at home or any other storage which is not the machine you're using... The data must go from the storage to the player somehow, it won't magically appear.
• content: the idea of integrating cloud storage streaming is that you choose where you keep your content; Poweramp is not responsible for changes Google Drive or dropbox or your own NAS server make...
• interface: I only use it for music, I have no experience with other media files; but of course the interface should be the same