Firstly apologies for the title - difficult to fit everything in with the character limit. tl:dr Google Play Music All Access on PS4 and Xbox One if you have an Android device, using DLNA. Music can play in the background on PS4 while gaming, and snapped on Xbox One.
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Recently there was a post over on the Android subreddit that the app BubbleUPNP has support for Google Play Music. This means that there's technically a way for GPM All Access subscribers with an Android device such as myself to listen to the service on PS4, including background music and track notifications while gaming as with Spotify, and on Xbox One with Media Player snapped. Apparently this has existed for a while, but it's the first I've heard of it so I thought I'd write a quick guide in case anyone else subscribes to GPM and was looking for a way to use it on consoles.
Note: BubbleUPnP is free, however you'll need to purchase a licence to remove certain restrictions (such as only being able to listen to 16 tracks). For how useful the app is though, I think the licence is well worth it, and there are no other purchases, IAPs or restrictions once you have the licence.
Steps for PS4
1. Install BubbleUPnP on your Android phone
2. Start it, go to the left hamburger menu and expand "Cloud" - Google Music is an option, so choose that.
3. Choose your GPM Google account, and you'll get asked to grant the app permission (Weirdly, all it said for me was "sj" which struck me as strange, but from a Google it seems this has been the name of the permission since at least 2011 - it's apparently the internal name for GPM, supposedly short for "SkyJam")
4. The app will then take a couple of minutes syncing all of your playlists, albums etc. Once done, go to your PS4.
5. Start Media Player on the PS4 and you should see "BubbleUPnP Media Server (Your phone model)" as an option, so pick that.
6. You can then browse the folder list Google Music > Albums or Artists or Playlists, and there are all your songs. Choose one to start playing it, and any options you want such as shuffle/repeat, then hit the PS button to background it. The quick menu options for previous/next track and play/pause work too.
Steps for Xbox One
1. Follow the same BubbleUPnP steps as above.
2. On the console choose My Games and Apps -> Apps -> Media Player -> BubbleUPnP (your device) -> Google Music.
Unfortunately the only way to "background" the music on XB1 appears to be snapping Media Player to the side of the screen, which isn't ideal.
If you add new tracks or playlists to GPM and want them available on console you'll need to go back to BubbleUPnP on your Android device, pick Google Music from the menu and choose Sync from the right-hand 3 dots menu. That is unless you set up a Tasker profile to do it automatically:
Automatically sync new GPM songs/albums/playlists with BubbleUPnP (and by extension your PS4/XB1)
1. If you don't have it already, purchase and install Tasker on your Android device (this supposedly also works with Llama (free), but I don't know the steps for that).
2. Start Tasker. On the Profiles screen, click + to add a new profile and choose "Time" as the First Context.
3. Untick "To" as it's not needed. Set "From" to whichever time of day you'd like to first run the sync.
4. Tick "Repeat", choose hours or minutes depending on how often you want your changes to be synced, and then enter a number for how often you want this to happen.
5. Click the Back arrow icon in the top left when you've set the time and repeat interval, an 'Enter Task' menu will then pop up. Choose "New Task" (scroll the menu to the top if this isn't visible). Give it a name, e.g. "Sync GPM".
6. The 'Task Edit' screen will appear. Click + at the bottom of the screen, choose System, then pick "Send Intent".
7. In the 'Action' box, paste or type the following exactly: com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp.GOOGLE_MUSIC_SYNC
8. Leave everything else as is, and press the back arrow icon at the top left twice. If all goes well you should be back at the Profiles screen and your Sync GPM task should be set to "On". That's it, sync is now automatic.
Useful settings for BubbleUPnP
Some of these will require the Pro licence to be purchased.
Phew, that was longer than I expected. Apologies, hope this helps others though. I'm very happy right now, being able to listen to GPM on PS4 while gaming - the one reason I was considering switching to Spotify, and now I don't need to.
---
Recently there was a post over on the Android subreddit that the app BubbleUPNP has support for Google Play Music. This means that there's technically a way for GPM All Access subscribers with an Android device such as myself to listen to the service on PS4, including background music and track notifications while gaming as with Spotify, and on Xbox One with Media Player snapped. Apparently this has existed for a while, but it's the first I've heard of it so I thought I'd write a quick guide in case anyone else subscribes to GPM and was looking for a way to use it on consoles.
Note: BubbleUPnP is free, however you'll need to purchase a licence to remove certain restrictions (such as only being able to listen to 16 tracks). For how useful the app is though, I think the licence is well worth it, and there are no other purchases, IAPs or restrictions once you have the licence.
Steps for PS4
1. Install BubbleUPnP on your Android phone
2. Start it, go to the left hamburger menu and expand "Cloud" - Google Music is an option, so choose that.
3. Choose your GPM Google account, and you'll get asked to grant the app permission (Weirdly, all it said for me was "sj" which struck me as strange, but from a Google it seems this has been the name of the permission since at least 2011 - it's apparently the internal name for GPM, supposedly short for "SkyJam")
4. The app will then take a couple of minutes syncing all of your playlists, albums etc. Once done, go to your PS4.
5. Start Media Player on the PS4 and you should see "BubbleUPnP Media Server (Your phone model)" as an option, so pick that.
6. You can then browse the folder list Google Music > Albums or Artists or Playlists, and there are all your songs. Choose one to start playing it, and any options you want such as shuffle/repeat, then hit the PS button to background it. The quick menu options for previous/next track and play/pause work too.
Steps for Xbox One
1. Follow the same BubbleUPnP steps as above.
2. On the console choose My Games and Apps -> Apps -> Media Player -> BubbleUPnP (your device) -> Google Music.
Unfortunately the only way to "background" the music on XB1 appears to be snapping Media Player to the side of the screen, which isn't ideal.
If you add new tracks or playlists to GPM and want them available on console you'll need to go back to BubbleUPnP on your Android device, pick Google Music from the menu and choose Sync from the right-hand 3 dots menu. That is unless you set up a Tasker profile to do it automatically:
Automatically sync new GPM songs/albums/playlists with BubbleUPnP (and by extension your PS4/XB1)
1. If you don't have it already, purchase and install Tasker on your Android device (this supposedly also works with Llama (free), but I don't know the steps for that).
2. Start Tasker. On the Profiles screen, click + to add a new profile and choose "Time" as the First Context.
3. Untick "To" as it's not needed. Set "From" to whichever time of day you'd like to first run the sync.
4. Tick "Repeat", choose hours or minutes depending on how often you want your changes to be synced, and then enter a number for how often you want this to happen.
5. Click the Back arrow icon in the top left when you've set the time and repeat interval, an 'Enter Task' menu will then pop up. Choose "New Task" (scroll the menu to the top if this isn't visible). Give it a name, e.g. "Sync GPM".
6. The 'Task Edit' screen will appear. Click + at the bottom of the screen, choose System, then pick "Send Intent".
7. In the 'Action' box, paste or type the following exactly: com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp.GOOGLE_MUSIC_SYNC
8. Leave everything else as is, and press the back arrow icon at the top left twice. If all goes well you should be back at the Profiles screen and your Sync GPM task should be set to "On". That's it, sync is now automatic.
Useful settings for BubbleUPnP
Some of these will require the Pro licence to be purchased.
- Settings -> Now Playing -> disable 'Keep screen on' - it's not needed as far as I've been able to tell, and will conserve battery.
- Settings -> Local Renderer -> Gapless playback - fairly obvious, enables gapless playback (still sometimes seems to take a second or two to buffer the next song, but it's worth enabling for when it does work).
- Settings -> Local Media Server -> Make sure 'Enable' and 'Advertise on LAN' are both checked.
- Settings -> Control -> Start on boot - This along with the next tweak means you shouldn't need to run the BubbleUPnP app in the foreground for your server to show up on console.
- Settings -> UPnP Tweaks -> Blast alive messages - This is the most important I've found, as the PS4 media player app seems to "forget" the server exists after a while, needing a restart of the app (and sometimes BubbleUPnP itself). This solves that - the app will keep sending 'alive' messages meaning that the PS4 will always pick it up within 10 seconds at the very most.
Phew, that was longer than I expected. Apologies, hope this helps others though. I'm very happy right now, being able to listen to GPM on PS4 while gaming - the one reason I was considering switching to Spotify, and now I don't need to.
