How to Move from Google Play Music to Plex Music

Question

This is for anyone else who, like me, is mourning the sad, soon-coming death of Google Play (Music) and annoyed w/the forced moved to YouTube Music. The question/goal I had was simply "how do I move from Google Play (Music) to Plex Music?" so I figured I'd share my notes/steps here in case anyone else finds it helpful. Reminder: Once Google Play is turned off officially (date unknown, end of 2020?) you won't be able to perform some or all of these steps anymore.

Answer 1

1) Download Your Music from Google

Use Google's "Music Manager" app to download your entire library to your hard drive somewhere. While you can download your music from Google Play using the Chrome "Google Play" extension I don't recommend if you can avoid it because it's buggy and it doesn't make Artist and Album folders for you like the "Music Manager" app does which, IMHO, is helpful vs a folder w/thousands of unorganized MP3 files.

(1B) Some people may need to refer to the pycryptodomex docs if they encounter compiler issues with gmusicapi and plexapi. Thanks to Paul for the heads up.

2) Setup Plex Music Library

Assuming you have a Plex server setup and running, create a "Plex Music" library item and pick the folder(s) it should use. Once this is done, copy all your music from step #1 above to it, tell Plex to scan the folders and wait for it to finish scanning everything. Confirm all your albums/artists show up, in general, as they did in Google Play (Music).

3) Pull Google Play (Music) Playlists into Plex Music

Reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/hfgnvk/import_google_play_music_playlists/

1. Install python for Windows (if not installed already)
2. Run this in a command prompt to install the python script dependencies: python -m pip install --upgrade pip gmusicapi plexapi requests
3. Download copy of this python script here
4. Get these 3 things from your Plex server:

• Plex URL (e.g. http://10.10.1.10:32400)
• Active Plex Token via these instructions
• Name of the Plex Music library you're importing your Google playlists to

5. Add the 3 Plex items from #4 above to the top of your copy of the python script and save the file.
6. Run your copy of the python script in a command prompt: python gmusic_playlists_to_plex.py
7. Follow prompt instructions to authenticate on Google and watch the magic happen (You may have to run it a second time after authenticating if it throws an error on first try)

Note: A few of my playlists were mangled a bit (maybe due to deleted songs or metadata oddities but fortunately most of my most-recent/most-used playlists copied over fine.

4) Enjoy Plex Music!

While I know maintaining a music locally (via Plex) will require hard drive/backup maintenance work over time, I have to say I am loving Plex Music so far. There seems to be a bug w/the offline sync (w/the iOS app) but I'm sure they'll fix and aside from that the entire library/playlist/queue experience in Plex Music is actually faster and better than Google Play (IMHO) - loving it so far. I also just discovered today that they have a cool new iOS app dedicated entirely to the music stuff that seems even better than the Google Play iOS app: Plexamp.

Thanks again to the Reddit guys for elements in #3. LMK if I left anything important out or should add a step.