I’m cleaning out my gmail folders this weekend, and went deep into the archive to 2011, when I got my invite to Google Music.
It’s funny, because I just (November) moved all of my music out of cloud and back to local-only. Amazon was the last straw, when I tried to play purchased music, and was forced to listen to it on shuffle with other songs not of my choosing.
Anyway… there was a time when Google (ahem, Youtube) Music was set to be a game-changer. Imagine if enshittification wasn’t a thing.
Your music is likely still there if you grab it with Takeout. Mine was. The only problem: one flat folder. I spent weeks with Picard working out which tracks where what by title and acoustic ID. So, not great, but I got back my own music files for some things I’d forgotten completely.
I just did it and it worked! It’s definitely a jumble of music files but it’s all there, every last bit. Thank you, thank you so much. This has been weighing on my mind for so long, there are so many songs I can put back on my offline playlists now that I have them again. You’re the best!
Aw, man! That’s great that you’re back in business! I’m chuffed that you get to go down memory lane like this now. Music=culture=who we are and shouldn’t be controlled like in the digital age bastardization of copyright.