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When GPM launched, there was definitely no deduplication in place. Even if two users uploaded the same file, there would be two copies — more if you count repli
by the-rc 4y ago
When GPM launched, there was definitely no deduplication in place. Even if two users uploaded the same file, there would be two copies — more if you count replication and RS-encoding. It was so because... somebody ordered so.
Perhaps things changed later, but I'm skeptical, because the "somebodies" never change. Also, as recently as a couple of years ago, I noticed broken metadata/cover art in my library that I actually wish YTM would fix for me. I suspect it's more likely that the original bits were/are still in there somewhere and some UI made it harder to get to them. With YTM, accessing your own MP3s is a bit convoluted. I'll give it a shot later tonight, to see if I can download some music that I know to have specific metadata and bitrates.
- knaik94 4y agoI know for a fact that YTM still has poor metadata support, the only way to fix it is to reupload the entire file. That's a huge reason why I moved to a self hosted solution. I know there were multiple cases where the metadata was wrong and two separate versions of a song were tagged as the same track. But I never lost any data. I would recommend doing a takeout and exporting all the songs if possible. I have to imagine Google HAS to dedup on the server side, otherwise even a 100,000 song cap would be too much data to host for free. Google doesn't play ads on uploaded tracks. Google stores not-transcoded music files and has since "Google Music". When GPM first came out, it was a storage locker and felt more like direct competition to Grooveshark than iTunes. Record companies seem to have a very tight not just on the songs, but also the metadata surrounding them. No service really offers the "radio mode" or suggested tracks for local playback, from what I found. I'd happily give a company playback metadata if in return I got that feature back. I wonder if Pandora has patents for certain parts of music recommendation algorithms. Spotify and YTM can rely heavily on user-generated music connections, but maybe that is why it can't work for local/uploaded files.
- the-rc 4y ago> I have to imagine Google HAS to dedup on the server side It's been a decade since I helped with GPM storage, but one thing I can say is that Google won't dedup anything without the OK from lawyers on _both_ sides, with all the consequences that ensue. Somebody could turn this and similar launches into a TV show, but it wouldn't be as funny as Silicon Valley. On the contrary...