#GMusicProxy: Google Play Music Proxy

"Let's stream Google Play Music using any music program"

© Mario Di Raimondo

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 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 and now it is even more interesting with the All Access option. 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. I can't buy one (at the moment it is not available in my country) and it looks a bit closed. Even more I already got a music-system based on a PC connected to my HiFi audio system: it makes use of MPD and I would like 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! This proxy generates persistent URLs that never expire and that you can add to any playlist.

This project is not supported nor endorsed by Google. It's aim is not the abuse of the service but the one to open the ways to access this great service. 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
• stream any songs as standard MP3 complete of IDv3 tag with all the information and album image

Setup

Requirements

• a Google Play Music account with All Access subscription (some functionalities continue to work even with a free account)
• a Python 2.x interpreter
• a snapshot of gmusicapi that supports MobileClient and All Access (at the moment we need the develop branch)
• few extra python libs: netifaces, pyxdg, eyed3

Installation

• The easiest way is to use the automagic pip to install the proxy with all the dependencies from PyPI and GitHub repositories: pip install https://github.com/diraimondo/gmusicproxy/tarball/master

• The previous method could require the use of sudo or the rights of root user. If you don't want to mess your system, the right way it to use virtualenv:

  mkvirtualenv gmusicproxy
  pip install https://github.com/diraimondo/gmusicproxy/tarball/master

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 required information is the device ID of an Android device registered in your account: you can discover the one of your devices using the option --list-devices on the command-line.

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 option 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 device [required]
• --host: host in the generated URLs [default: autodetected local ip address]
• --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

Config file

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

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

When the proxy is launched, it searches for a file named gmusicproxy.cfg on 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.

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 an 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 a All Access subscription):

• /get_collection: reports an M3U playlist with all the songs in your personal 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: no]
• /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) [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 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:
  • type: 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 [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_playlist: reports the content of a registered playlist in the M3U format. Allowed parameters:
  • id: the unique identifier of the playlist [required]
• /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]

Examples of integration with other programs

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 the 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 and then extract 50 fresh songs from it.

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

Support

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.

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

Known problems / Ideas

• It looks that some uploaded MP3 files not present in the GM catalog can't be streamed: to investigate.
• The stations by genre are missing at the moment: to ask about this to Simon.
• At the moment if you redirect the stdout/stderror of gmusicproxy on a file or on a pipeline, Python converts all the output strings using an encoding that is not able to manage non-ascii characters (òèàùì...): we need a more robust info/debug output system.
• We need an option to daemonize gmusicproxy.

Limitations

The proxy can manage only one request at time. The internal structure of the proxy can be extended to manage concurrent requests but first I have to investigate about the Google API and gmusicapi limitations on concurrent accesses.

As stated above, you need the device ID of a registered Android device in order to stream the music. This is a requirement of the Google API. An alternative could be to register a virtual-device using the emulator of the Android SDK.

The program was designed under Linux systems but it should work also under Windows or Mac OS X. Testers are welcome!