Plex is a popular program for hosting media files on one device and streaming them to others. If you’ve set up some groups in the Google Home app, you’ll be able keep casting music to those groups just like before.
The good news, however, is that all the solutions I’m about to describe do support multi-room audio. That means you’ll need to use a phone, computer, or tablet to start a listening session and skip tracks. You can ask Google to pause, resume, or stop playback, but you can’t select music, fast forward, or rewind. First, a disclaimerīefore we get into the alternatives, keep in mind that none of the options below support launching music by voice via Google Home speakers. Let’s walk through the options for keeping the music alive on Google Home speakers after Google Play Music goes away in December.
Google to digital music collectors: Pay up to play your own music on your Google-centric speaker systems. Instead, those who have extensive MP3, FLAC, or other digital music collections will have to start considering other ways to play music via Google Cast. In an ideal world, Google would continue supporting free playback on Google Home and Chromecast devices as a goodwill gesture to longtime users, or at least offer a cheaper upload-only subscription tier. But while YouTube Music now supports music uploads and offers an easy migration tool for Google Play Music users, the transition comes with a catch: YouTube Music’s uploads aren’t playable on Google Home Speakers and Chromecast streaming dongles, at least not without paying $10 per month for a full-blown YouTube Music Premium subscription. At the end of this year, Google will discontinue Google Play Music and push users over to YouTube Music as a replacement. Unfortunately, the free ride is just about over.