How to download your music off of Google Play Music - Android

Google is killing off Google Play Music’s streaming service so you may want to migrate to somewhere else. However, many people bought music on Google Play and probably want to take their music with them. Don’t worry, it’s actually not all that difficult to do. If you don’t own music, you can transfer everything else directly to YouTube Music and keep using it there. Here is a quick guide on downloading your music from Google Play Music so you can take it with you if you decide to leave.

More articles about Google Play Music:

• Transfer your stuff from Google Play Music to YouTube Music
• 5 best Google Play Music alternatives

Download from PC and Mac (recommended)

Downloading music to your PC is the best, easiest, and fastest method to do. There are actually three methods, the slow, painful method, the faster, better method, and the manual method. All three still work as of the time of this writing, although that may change as the service comes closer and closer to retirement.

The slow, painful method

• Click here to go to the Google Play Music Manager page. Download and install the app as you would any other app.
• Open the app and click on the Download tab along the top of the window.
• Select the option to download your library. We recommend the option with the biggest number (usually Download my library) because it contains every song you purchased or uploaded.
• It will ask you about a download location. You can choose iTunes, your computer’s music folder, or a folder of your choosing. We recommend a folder of your choosing so you can sort your music later. Click the Start download button to begin.
• Start watching the entire extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movies because the download is going to be very slow.
• Note: This method doesn’t actually stop. If you stop it and resume, it will start over about half of the time, re-downloading songs you already downloaded.

Jokes aside, this is actually not a terrible method if you don’t have a lot of music, but quickly gets worse and worse the larger your collection is. This is the only method that doesn’t require a specific browser and the only time we’d recommend it is if you can’t or won’t download and use Google Chrome.

The faster, better method (recommended for everyone)

• Note: This method requires you to use Google Chrome browser. It works on the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge if you enable the ability to install Chrome extensions.
• Open the Google Play Music web player by clicking here.
• Click the 3-line menu in the top left corner of the window. Select the Settings option.
• Scroll down until you find the Music from this computer section. Tap the Add Your Music button and follow the instructions. We recommend pointing it at a folder with no music since you’re here to download your music, not add more.
• Note: You also need to download a Google Play Music extension for the proper sections to show up if you haven’t already installed it.
• After that, two new sections should appear in the Settings. The first is Download folder. Configure that to the folder where you want your downloaded music to go. The second is Download your library. Click that to download your library.
• In the bottom left corner, an orange arrow icon will appear, tap that to view the progress of the download in your browser.

This method downloads music vastly faster than the previous method by a large margin and it’s also fairly easy to do. Plus, you don’t have to download and install a horrible app to do the work as it all takes place in the browser. Use this one, trust us.

The manual method

• Note: This method requires you to use Google Chrome browser. It works on the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge if you enable the ability to install Chrome extensions.
• Open the Google Play Music web player by clicking here.
• Navigate to any song or album you own in Google Play Music. It can music you’ve purchased or music you’ve uploaded.
• Tap the 3-dot menu button on the album or the individual songs and select the Download option.
• An orange and white arrow icon will appear in the bottom left corner of the window. Click that to view download progress.

This is actually just a manual, more granular version of the faster, better method. You can simply select the songs you want. However, unless your download messed up and you need to grab a specific album or song that the other download methods missed, you shouldn’t need this one at all.

Download from iOS and Android

Unfortunately, the official Google Play Music app doesn’t have a method to download your library to your mobile devices at this time. We looked in the app settings on both platforms and there are no options to download your library. You can only set playlists to download for offline listening and unfortunately that’s not the same thing as downloading your own collection for backup purposes.

We attempted a few methods to bypass this, including using a browser in desktop mode and trying to trick Google Play Music into letting us download something. We figured out how to get all the way to the Download album option (using Firefox), but we never got the site to actually send us any files because we could not install the proper extension. If this changes, we’ll let you know, but for the time being, it’s not possible to download your music for the purposes of backing up your library to your phone.