#GMusicProxy – Google Play Music Proxy

"Let's stream Google Play Music using any media-player"

© Mario Di Raimondo site: http://gmusicproxy.net

contributors:

• Nick Depinet
• Adam Prato
• Pierre Karashchuk
• Alex Busenius
• Mark Gillespie

License: GPL v3

About

This program permits the use of Google Play Music with All Access subscription with any music player that is able to stream MP3 files and to manage M3U playlists (e.g., MPD server, VLC, ...). It can work also with a free account without All Access extras.

Google has released a nice music service with the possibility to stream all the available music using the All Access subscription. The Google-way to listen your collection and the stations is by means of Android devices or any web browser. If you want to use your TVs or HiFi audio systems, the main tool is the Chromecast key (or its audio variant). These devices are closed and limited in someway. I already got a music-system at home based on a small Raspberry-PI connected to my HiFi audio system (using a professional DAC): it makes use of MPD and I wanted to keep it.

My project is based on the great Unofficial Google Play Music API of Simon Weber: it already permits to create URLs to stream the tracks as regular MP3 but they expire in 1 minute! Keeping this proxy running, it can generate persistent local URLs that never expire and that can be used in any media-player.

This project is not supported nor endorsed by Google. Its aim is not the abuse of the service but the one to improve the access to it. I'm not responsible of its misuse.

Features

• create persistent URLs to all the tracks, albums and stations available on the Google Play Music + All Access platform
• get access to all the songs in your collection, playlists and registered stations
• search by name any artist, album or song
• request a transient (it will be not registered in your account) station based on any search (a.k.a. "Instant Mix")
• stream any songs as standard MP3 complete of IDv3 tag with all the information and album image

Changelog

• 1.0.8b3 (unreleased):
  • daemon-mode is not supported under Windows (but it could be under cygwin...): this allows to run gmusicproxy without the daemon module
  • support for on-the-fly shuffling of playlists and collections
  • support for public/shared playlists
  • support filtering collection returned from get_collection by minimum rating (thanks to Mark Gillespie)
  • cache the end of song in RAM in order to prevent some connection timeout errors (thanks to Alex Busenius)
• 1.0.7 (2017-01-09):
  • possibility to bind to a specific network interface (thanks to fgtham)
  • bug fixes (shoutcast metadata)
  • early release to fix the lack of requirement for gmusicapi 10.1.0 in the setup
• 1.0.6 (2016-12-03):
  • support for concurrent requests (thanks to Pierre Karashchuk)
  • support for HEAD requests
  • better shoutcast headers handling
  • documentation improvements
  • a more robust re-authentication system (thanks to Alex Busenius)
  • new keyring support for desktop computers (thanks to Alex Busenius)
  • supported recent gmusicapi v.10.1.0 (fixed bugs and packaging problems)
  • bug fixes (shoutcast metadata support, content-disposition header, ...)
• 1.0.5 (2016-05-04):
  • send to the client the effective song size: this should allow the player (VLC) to properly show the progress of the playback
  • make HTTP connection for version control more robust: not fatal on error (my HTTP server is down: sorry!)
  • new support to the Shoutcast metadata protocol: at the moment alternative to the IDv3 tag supporto, so disabled by default (thanks to Adam Prato)
• 1.0.4 (2016-02-27):
  • implemented a RAM-based cache for songs list: it speeds-up streaming of songs in collection or if AA is disabled
  • implemented the automatic increment of the playcounts of the fetched songs; the previous behavior can be restored with option disable-playcount-increment
• 1.0.3 (2015-12-07):
  • added Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * header to allow web-pages to interact with GMusicProxy API
  • bump gmusicapi requirement to 7.0.0 to fix validation errors
  • fix in documentation
  • fix/workaround to use python-daemon>=2.1
• 1.0.2 (2015-07-16):
  • added possibility to get the full discography of a specified artist using get_discography_artist (thanks to e-matterson for the idea and an attempted implementation)
• 1.0.1 (2015-06-21):
  • switched on gmusicapi 6.0.0
  • the use of a registered device ID is no longer stricly necessary but it is still suggested
• 1.0.0 (2015-06-12):
  • finally fixed the support of uploaded tracks: now GMusicProxy can really work without a paid subscription!
  • code cleanup
  • some bugs squashing
  • now it is possible to support the project with a small donation
• 0.9.9.2 (2015-06-04):
  • fixed breakage on login due to gmusicapi change (thanks for the pull request to @Mlmlte)
  • reverted on gmusicapi 5.0.0: it was released!
  • restored --list-devices functionality moving on new mobileclient get_registered_devices function of gmusicapi
• 0.9.9 (2015-05-27):
  • fixed login problem using the devel branch (5.0.0-dev0) of gmusicapi (today not yet released)
  • changed the installation instructions using pip requirements.txt file: this permits the automatic deploy of gmusicapi from github
  • the functionality --list-devices is actually broken: keep a copy of you device ids!
• 0.9.8 (2014-09-14):
  • new option extended-m3u: it optionally extends #EXTINF: lines of the produced M3U lists to a non-standard format like artist - song title - album title
• 0.9.7 (2014-08-25):
  • merged a contribution by Nick Depinet to report all the possible matches of a search (support required by project CSH DJ)
• 0.9.6 (2014-08-08):
  • added support for returning multiple songs in the search results using type songs for get_by_search
• 0.9.5 (2014-03-23):
  • added support for the dynamic 'I'm feeling lucky' station: get_ifl_station
• 0.9.4 (2014-02-02):
  • added support for 'album artist' tag (requires a development version >= 0.7.5-beta of eyed3 lib)
  • added control on startup for new versions
• 0.9.2 (2013-10-30):
  • added the possibility to rate songs (like/dislike)
• 0.9.1 (2013-10-05):
  • a new and more robust message/log system
  • possibility to daemonize the proxy
• 0.8 (2013-09-22):
  • rewrote command-line/config system
  • possibility to disable AA features for a free GM account
  • improved documentation
• 0.6 (2013-09-15): first public version

Related projects

• Simon's Unofficial-Google-Music-API (the great backend used by gmusicproxy): https://github.com/simon-weber/gmusicapi
• web2py-mpd-gmproxy (a web interface that uses gmusicproxy as backend): https://github.com/matclab/web2py-mpd-gmproxy
• GMusic-MPD (an helper script for GMusicProxy together with MPD): https://github.com/Illyism/GMusic-MPD
• gmproxy-scripts (helper scripts for working with GMusicProxy): https://github.com/kmac/gmproxy-scripts
• gpmplay (a bash script to easily search with GMusicproxy): https://github.com/onespaceman/gmpplay
• g-music (Emacs client for gmusicproxy and mpd): https://github.com/bodicsek/g-music
• GMusicProxyGui (a C# GUI for the GMusicProxy): https://github.com/Poket-Jony/GMusicProxyGui

Support

Donations

Get this project as it is: I will work on it as long as I have fun in developing and using it. I share it as Open-Source code because I believe in OSS and to open it to external contributions.

The access to an All Access subscription is strictly necessary to continue its development: in the last months I've scarcely used this service. At the moment I'm keeping the subscription to be able to maintain the project. I could stop it in the next months.

If you use and appreciate GMusicProxy, consider the possibility to donate a small amount to support the maintenance and improvement of the project. For sake of transparency I will report the amount of donations I receive each year and the percentage of Google Play Music subscription fees you are covering (8€ per month as early subscriber) with them:

• year 2015: 15€ on 96€
• year 2016: 96€ on 96€
• year 2017: 10€ on 96€

Issues

Feel free to open bug reports (complete of verbose output produced with options --debug and --log) on GitHub, to fork the project and to make pull requests for your contributions.

Setup

Requirements

• a Google Play Music account with All Access subscription (some functionalities continue to work even with a free account)
• a Python 2.7 interpreter
• some python libs: gmusicapi, netifaces, pyxdg, eyed3, python-daemon

Installation

The following instructions have a Debian/Ubuntu GNU/Linux system as reference: nevertheless they work on any other GNU/Linux system using the right substitute of apt-get. It is known to work also on Mac OS X and Windows systems.

In order to build some dependencies, you need for sure a working building system with sudo apt-get install build-essential python2.7-dev. It could be useful to add some necessary packages: sudo apt-get install libffi-dev libssl-dev.

• The easiest way, but not suggested, is to use the pip command to install the proxy with all the dependencies from PyPI and GitHub repositories:

  • sudo apt-get install python-pip
  • get a copy of the sources using one of these methods:
    • git clone https://github.com/diraimondo/gmusicproxy.git
    • download and extract a tar or zip archive of the last version
  • install it and all the dependencies using sudo pip install -r requirements.txt from the inside of the folder
  • use it from everywhere: GMusicProxy

  The pip install ... command could require the options --allow-external eyed3 --allow-unverified eyed3 on some systems in order to validate the installation of eyed3.

  Importante note: the usage of sudo pip ... commands could mess up your main packaging system; consider the next method.

• The right way to use an under-development python project makes use of virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper utilities:

  • install the proxy once:

    sudo apt-get install python-pip python-virtualenv virtualenvwrapper
    mkvirtualenv -p /usr/bin/python2 gmusicproxy
    git clone https://github.com/diraimondo/gmusicproxy.git
    cd gmusicproxy
    pip install -r requirements.txt

    note: it could be necessary to close/reopen the shell in order to use virtualenvwrapper aliases

  • launch the proxy when you need it:

    workon gmusicproxy
    GMusicProxy

  • if you need to upgrade the proxy and its dependencies:

    • use the option --upgrade on the pip installation command (e.g., pip install --upgrade -r requirements), or
    • clean-up the virtualenv using deactivate ; rmvirtualenv gmusicproxy and reinstall everything as before.

Usage

With the service running on a computer on the LAN, it can be used by any others of the same network.

To launch the proxy you need the credentials of your Google account: email and password. If you are using the 2-factor authentication, you have to create an application-specific password to be used with this program. Another usefull information would be the device ID of an Android/iOS device registered in your account: you can discover it using the option --list-devices on the command-line. As default a fake-id, based on the mac address of the main network card of the server running the service, is used.

You can provide such necessary information, as well as other options, on the command-line of the program or using a configuration file.

Command-line

Here a list of the supported options on the command-line:

• --email: email address of the Google account [required]
• --password: password of the Google account [required]
• --device-id: the ID of a registered Android/iOS device [default: fake-id based on mac address of network card]
• --host: host in the generated URLs [default: autodetected local ip address]
• --bind-address: ip address to bind to [default: 0.0.0.0=all]
• --port: default TCP port to use [default: 9999]
• --config: specific configuration file to use
• --disable-all-access: disable All Access functionalities
• --list-devices: list the registered devices
• --debug: enable debug messages
• --log: log file
• --daemon: daemonize the program
• --disable-version-check: disable check for latest available version
• --extended-m3u: enable non-standard extended m3u headers
• --shoutcast-metadata: enable Shoutcast metadata protocol support (disabling IDv3 tags)
• --disable-playcount-increment: disable the automatic increment of playcounts upon song fetch
• --keyring-backend: name of the keyring backend to use instead of the default one
• --list-keyring-backends: list the available keyring backends
• --keyring-service: keyring service to use, takes precedence over --password if set
• --keyring-entry: keyring entry to use, required if --keyring-service is used

Config file

All the command-line options can be specified in a configuration file. An example of configuration with the strictly required options could look like this:

email = my.email@gmail.com
password = my-secret-password
device-id = 54bbd32a309a34ef

When the proxy is launched, it searches for a file named gmusicproxy.cfg in the XDG-compliant folders like /home/USER/.config/ or /etc/xdg/. It is possible to specify an arbitrary config file on the command-line using the option --config.

Using keyring to store the password

Password can be retrieved from one of the available keyrings (e.g. KWallet, Freedesktop Secret Service, Windows Credential Vault, Mac OS X Keychain). Use command-line option --list-keyring-backends to find out, which keyring backends are supported on your platform. If the default keyring backend is not what you want, you can override it using option --keyring-backend.

To read the password from the keyring, specify the options --keyring-service and --keyring-entry. Use the corresponding keyring manager to store the password or find entry name for one of your existing passwords.

E.g. for KWallet, you can list available service names and entries as follows:

# list service names
kwallet-query -l kdewallet -f ""
# list entries of service "Passwords"
kwallet-query -l kdewallet -f "Passwords"

URL-based interface

The only way to use the service is to query the proxy by means of properly formatted HTTP requests over the configured TCP port. Such URLs can be used directly in music programs or in scripts or in any browser. A URL looks like this: http://host:port/command?param_1=value&param_2=value. I don't apply any validation to the submitted values: please, be nice with the proxy and don't exploit it! :)

Consider that any song, album, artist, playlist or station got a unique ID in Google Music API but there are many methods to discover them.

Here a list of the supported requests (with some restricted by the availability of a All Access subscription):

• /get_collection: reports an M3U playlist with all the songs in your personal collection; the resulting list can be shuffled and/or filtered using the rating; note that not all the rated (liked) songs belong to your collection. Allowed parameters:
  • shuffle: if the collection has to be shuffled [default: no]
  • rating: an integer value (typically between 1-5) to filter out low rated or unrated songs form your collection
• /search_id: reports the unique ID as result of a search for an artist, a song or an album. Allowed parameters:
  • type: search for artist, album or song [required]
  • title: a string to search in the title of the album or of the song
  • artist: a string to search in the name of the artist in any kind of search
  • exact: a yes implies an exact match between the query parameters artist and title and the real data of the artist/album/song [default: yes]
• /get_by_search: makes a search for artist/album/song as /search_id and returns the related content (an M3U list for the album or for the top songs of an artist and the MP3 file for a song); it is also possible to get the full list of matches reported by Google Music using search with type=matches [requires A.A.]. Allowed parameters:
  • type: search for artist, album, song or matches [required]
  • title: a string to search in the title of the album or of the song
  • artist: a string to search in the name of the artist in any kind of search
  • exact: a yes implies an exact match between the query parameters artist and title and the real data of the artist/album/song; it doesn't make sense with a search for matches [default: no]
  • num_tracks: the number of top songs to return in a search for artist [default: 20]
• /get_all_stations: reports a list of registered stations as M3U playlist (with URLs to other M3U playlist) or as plain-text list (with one station per line) [requires A.A.]. Allowed parameters:
  • format: m3u for an M3U list or text for a plain-text list with lines like Name of the Station|URL to an M3U playlist [default: m3u]
  • separator: a separator for the plain-text lists [default: |]
  • only_url: a yes creates a list of just URLs in the plain-text lists (the name of the station is totally omitted) [default: no]
  • exact: a yes implies an exact match between the query parameters artist and title and the real data of the artist/album/song [default: no]
• /get_all_playlists: reports the playlists registered in the account as M3U playlist (with URLs to other M3U playlist) or as plain-text list (with one playlist per line). The allowed parameters are the same as /get_all_stations.
• /get_new_station_by_search: reports as M3U playlist the content of a new (transient or permanent) station created on the result of a search for artist/album/song (a.k.a. "Instant Mix") [requires A.A.]. Allowed parameters:
  • type: search for artist, album or song [required]
  • title: a string to search in the title of the album or of the song
  • artist: a string to search in the name of the artist in any kind of search
  • exact: a yes implies an exact match between the query parameters artist and title and the real data of the artist/album/song [default: no]
  • num_tracks: the number of songs to extract from the new station [default: 20]
  • transient: a no creates a persistent station that will be registered into the account [default: yes]
  • name: the name of the persistent station to create [required if transient is no]
• /get_new_station_by_id: reports as M3U playlist the content of a new (transient or permanent) station created on a specified id of an artist/album/song [requires A.A.]. Allowed parameters:
  • id: the unique identifier of the artist/album/song [required]
  • type: the type of id specified among artist, album and song [required]
  • num_tracks: the number of songs to extract from the new station [default: 20]
  • transient: a no creates a persistent station that will be registered into the account [default: yes]
  • name: the name of the persistent station to create [required if transient is no]
• /get_station: reports an M3U playlist of tracks associated to the given station [requires A.A.]. Allowed parameters:
  • id: the unique identifier of the station [required]
  • num_tracks: the number of tracks to extract [default: 20]
• /get_ifl_station: reports an M3U playlist of tracks associated to the automatic "I'm feeling lucky" station [requires A.A.]. Allowed parameters:
  • num_tracks: the number of tracks to extract [default: 20]
• /get_playlist: reports the content of a registered playlist in the M3U format; the list can be also shuffled. Allowed parameters:
  • id: the unique identifier of the playlist [required]
  • shuffle: if the list has to be shuffled [default: no]
• /get_album: reports the content of an album as an M3U playlist. Allowed parameters:
  • id: the unique identifier of the album [required]
• /get_song: streams the content of the specified song as a standard MP3 file with IDv3 tag. Allowed parameters:
  • id: the unique identifier of the song [required]
• /get_top_tracks_artist: reports an M3U playlist with the top songs of a specified artist [requires A.A.]. Allowed parameters:
  • id: the unique identifier of the artist [required]
  • type: the type of id specified among artist, album and song [required]
  • num_tracks: the number of top songs to return [default: 20]
• /get_discography_artist: reports the list of available albums of a specified artist as M3U playlist (with URLs to other M3U playlist) or as plain-text list (with one album per line) [requires A.A.]. Allowed parameters:
  • id: the unique identifier of the artist [required]
  • format: m3u for an M3U list or text for a plain-text list with lines like Name of Album|Year|URL to an M3U playlist [default: m3u]
  • separator: a separator for the plain-text lists [default: |]
  • only_url: a yes creates a list of just URLs in the plain-text lists (the name of the album is totally omitted) [default: no]
• /like_song: reports a positive rating on the song with specified id. Allowed parameters:
  • id: the unique identifier of the song [required]
• /dislike_song: reports a negative rating on the song with specified id. Allowed parameters:
  • id: the unique identifier of the song [required]

Examples of integration

MPD

• You can copy any M3U list generated by the proxy in the playlists registered inside MPD. MPD usually keeps the playlists inside the folder specified by playlist_directory in its configuration file mpd.conf.

  curl -s 'http://localhost:9999/get_by_search?type=album&artist=Queen&title=Greatest%20Hits' >
    /var/lib/mpd/playlists/queen.m3u
  mpc load queen
  mpc play

• You can also request a fresh list of songs from a station and add them to the current playlist.

  mpc clear
  curl -s 'http://localhost:9999/get_new_station_by_search?type=artist&artist=Queen&num_tracks=100' |
    grep -v ^# | while read url; do mpc add "$url"; done
  mpc play

VLC

• You can listen any generated playlist using VLC from command-line.

  vlc 'http://localhost:9999/get_by_search?type=album&artist=Rolling%20Stones&title=tattoo&exact=no'

• You can automatically choose at random one registered station.

  curl -s 'http://localhost:9999/get_all_stations?format=text&only_url=yes' | sort -R | head -n1 | vlc -