Google Music is the Compact Solution for the Missing De La Soul Albums

Digital music is life. We are officially in 2020 and if you haven’t got a subscription to Spotify, or Apple Music, or some other streaming service, then you are living in the dark ages. Or perhaps you’re just living off the grid, which then this is irrelevant content for you anyway.

I listen to music all of the time. Unless I am reading and concentrating on a book. Or watching a movie. Recently I upgraded my in home sound experience with SYMFONISK speakers from IKEA, which are the bomb. I got speaker number 2 for Christmas, and my next move will be to add the SONOS One speaker to the group and install that in my bathroom to truly transition from room to room with my sound. I use Spotify primarily, and for the most part find the music I want. 

Then I realized that the entire time I have been using Spotify, I still can’t find De La Soul’s early albums.

When they released a new album in 2016, that was online, but not my favorite album of all time: 3 Feet High and Rising. I didn’t think anything of it because I have their CDs and justified keeping my CD collection because I couldn’t find them online. But as I have spent more time streaming music and less time dusting off my CD collection, I began to wonder why after all these years their old albums are still not online?

What other music services do I have that I can use with my SYMFONISK speakers?

Well, the SONOS music app is compatible with Google Music. Therefore Google Music app is compatible too. I don’t have the streaming service with Google Music because I am already paying for Spotify and that’s overkill. BUT – Google Music does have a feature which takes it above and beyond the other streaming services — you can access your own music library (aka CDs you have ripped on your computer and MP3 files) FOR FREE! 

Plus you already have this available if you have a Gmail account, no extra sign ups needed.  I am all for additional simplicity.

I uploaded the songs I had ripped from my CDs to the window that pops up and then I just wait for my account to sync. Those songs are now in my Music Library, and accessible from all my devices that can access Google Music through an app or the webpage. Although the app on my iPod, and the app on my android phone are my two main methods.

Apple has a slightly similar service called iTunes Match — but it’s not free, and your music has to also have available through iTunes for it to be “matched” to use through the cloud. So good luck listening to the CDs or cassettes you ripped to MP3s that you bought from the trunk of a car after a local band played at the coffeehouse downtown for a that band no longer exists, because if their songs aren’t available in iTunes, the songs won’t be “matched”. Yes, I am speaking from personal experience. 

I had been using Google Music exclusively for some time until I had a student subscription to Spotify back when I was enrolled in classes, at which point I got hooked on Spotify and my playlists so Google Music fell to the wayside once I started paying for the Premium Family and got my kids on Spotify with me. So I launched my music library and ripped my De La Soul CDs onto my computer and then uploaded the songs to my google music library. So now I can stream my missing CDs at home on my SYMFONISK speakers, or at work through my phone. I’m psyched. It’s like my music got a new lease on life. 

So why aren’t early De La Soul albums available to stream?

Well, this BBC article explains it all, but apparently Warner Brothers, who currently owns the rights to those albums, doesn’t feel that there is enough reason to update their copyright usage on all the samples in all their songs beyond the initial language that limited their usage to records/CDs and cassettes. What the actual fuck? Why not?

With all the garbage music out there right now, you mean to tell me they can’t spare an intern or two to concentrate on this one project and get this shit sorted out? Get your act together Warner Brothers and get De La Soul’s music online! This is a big chunk of my youth that I can’t share with my kids who think that those silver circular things are a relic of the past.

How can we get a petition started to save this music and get those execs off their ass to do something useful for a change?

In the meantime, I have my Google Music workaround and my CDs.