Better MM: a better* Google Music Manager

• Background
• User Stories
• Requirements
• Installation
• Usage
• Process
• Cross-Platform Warning
• Status
• Helpful Tips
  • Auto-run BetterMM on startup
  • Need to change settings

Note: This has only been tested in Windows with Python 3. More info.

Background

BetterMM provides a command line interface to Google Music Manager, a utility for uploading your music library to Google Music. The difference is that BetterMM solves issues that users may run into when using Google's utility. This is all possible due to gmusicapi, an unofficial Python interface for Google Music.

BetterMM is aimed at those with larger libraries who may want to tweak their uploading options. The program uses user-dictated dates that music files were added by (think recently added) to specify which files should be uploaded. It does not use modification times. This is another big difference between BetterMM and Music Manager: minor tag changes do not reupload files.

My personal writeup on the matter can be found here.

User Stories

• Google Music Manager wants to upload all my music again.
• I want to upload a limited subset of my music bounded by date added, not by directory.
• I want to upload from multiple machines and not worry about hitting Google Music's authorized devices limit.

Requirements

Note: This can only work if you have less than 10 devices already authorized in Google Music. If you have 10, you must deauthorize one. You can only deauthorize a device if you haven't deauthorized 4 other devices this year. If this is a problem, try contacting Google customer support, people have been able to remove this limit simply by asking.

• Windows (see note about other platforms)
• Python 3+

Installation

1. git clone https://github.com/cofinley/BetterMM.git
2. cd BetterMM/
3. pip install -r requirements.txt

• For use in virtualenv, do this between steps 2 and 3:
  1. For Python 3.3+: python -m venv venv (
     • If Python version below 3.3 (python --version):
       1. pip install virtualenv
       2. virtualenv venv
  2. venv\Scripts\activate
     • For Unix: venv/bin/activate

Usage

python run.py

If using virtualenv, activate first: venv\Scripts\activate.

Use -v or --verbose flags to specify date ranges later on (automatic on the first run).

Process

This process outlines the first run of the script. Subsequent runs, if not in verbose mode, will not prompt you for music directory or date ranges.

1. Enter in full path of music directory
2. Enter in a date range of music added (if desired)
   • How far back (start date) and how recent files (end date) were added to directory
3. Follow Google oauth instructions
4. Program searches for flacs, mp3s in music directory
   • Only takes files which are within the given date range
     • If no range given, all files considered
5. Upload to Google Music
6. Log saved to logs/log_files/

Cross-Platform Warning

At the time of writing this, I have only used BetterMM with Windows. The python function used to get file creation times, getctime(), gets the file creation time in Windows, but only gets the file modification time in Unix systems. The point of BetterMM was to not reupload music files just because of a small, insignificant tag change. Only looking at modification time will reupload music after these tag changes and voids this distinction from Music Manager. There is a Mac workaround which I plan on implementing (testing is another story).

Status

• April 11, 2017: Mac and Linux currently unsupported. Album art will not upload, a known issue in the gmusicapi library.

Helpful Tips

Auto-run BetterMM on startup

1. Open Windows Task Scheduler
2. Create new task
3. Set trigger to "At log on" or whatever you prefer
4. Set the action to "Start a program"
   • Program/script: python.exe
     • If using virtualenv, browse for BetterMM/<venv_name>/Scripts/python.exe
   • Arguments: run.py
     • run.py -v for setting date ranges every time
   • Start in: full path to BetterMM/

• You might want to only allow the task to run if a network is available.
• Allow run on-demand.

Need to change settings

• To change dates, just run the script in verbose mode: python run.py -v
• To change music directory, go to BetterMM/config/ and open config.json in a text editor to change the directory.
• To upload more audio formats, go to the same config file and add a format in "ext" like so: ["mp3", "flac", "new_format_here"]

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* says me