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A bit of good news for a change


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I uploaded all my music to Google Play Music a few years ago (some 35,000 tracks) This has allowed me to stream/cast music using my phone where ever I am, connect to the car and, importantly for me, cast to the kitchen speakers to keep me entertained when cooking/washing up!

Early this year Google discontinued the service and only offered migration to YouTube Music. This only allowed casting if you paid for their premium service. Effectively this cut off those of us who had invested in Google Home speakers/Chromecast etc. The community were not happy.

This week YouTube have dropped the requirement to pay to cast the music you already own. Back to a full selection of music to cook by - may never leave the kitchen again :)

Well I think its good news, we all need some these days.
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Some but not all of the music is stored on the NAS which is not on all the time. I don't want to turn on the NAS just to access it to play music. Phone does not have enough storage to hold all my music. Its in the cloud, easiest access to "cast" is Google play music/YT. If the NAS is on, true I can access it through, for example, Media Monkey.

If you have a paid subscription to Google Play or YT, you can "ask" Google Home for any piece of music. If not, you have to be quite specific to get a piece of Bach or Mozart. Easy for me to just do it off the phone/library.

Always willing to listen to an easier way to do it. Problem being I don't know anyone else with a "connected" house with speaker groups in different rooms.
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[quote user="Lehaut"]

Always willing to listen to an easier way to do it. Problem being I don't know anyone else with a "connected" house with speaker groups in different rooms.[/quote]

That's an interesting system. I thought the drive(s) in a NAS were optimised for being kept on always and that turning them on and off wasn't good for them, though of course you may have chosen standard drives.

Of course, you have a useful backup online (I have MS 365, but you pay for that!).

We subscribed to Tidal last year and so far it hasn't failed to have what I've looked for. Again, paid. We use it via Sonos - a very old ZP90 in one room, and a One in another - which seem to work well. We also have some Amazon Dots but I like those less.

It sounds like you've created a bespoke system which suits you well!
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Thanks for the comments, always useful to have other input.

The NAS drives are WD Reds, supposedly built for NAS. If we were using the NAS for back up to an office type system, then always on would be the way. As its only accessed in the evenings for entertainment, I turn it off and on as required. Its RAID 1 set up so back up is automatic. That said I do have all the music backed up now on YT, and pay for 200GB online storage, mainly for photos and videos we made when the children were younger, something we would hate to lose in a house fire. Dropbox still seems good for house accounts.

I only learned to make speaker groups on Google home a couple of weeks ago. Kitchen/Cooking(includes the living room) and whole house gives great flexibility. Every time I find something new, I wonder what else I might be missing!
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