iCloud Restore - Pinned Google Play Music Gone

[blairh]

Recently did an iCloud restore from backup. The restore backup was current. I had Google Play Music enabled in my iCloud backups. Had about 5 GB of music pinned for offline use. After my restore none of the pinned music is there. Can anyone explain? This shouldn't have happened right?

 

[bushido]

the same happened to me on Spotify after a restore. it had to redownload everything again

 

[blairh]

the same happened to me on Spotify after a restore. it had to redownload everything again

You had to do it manually right?

 

[blairh]

Sorry to bump this but another take would be appreciated. When I did an iCloud restore of my iPhone, it should have re-downloaded all the music I already pinned in the Google Play Music app, correct? Keep in mind I had this app enabled during all previous iCloud backups. After the iCloud restore no music returned pinned to my Google Play Music app.

 

[GreyOS]

Sorry to bump this but another take would be appreciated. When I did an iCloud restore of my iPhone, it should have re-downloaded all the music I already pinned in the Google Play Music app, correct? Keep in mind I had this app enabled during all previous iCloud backups. After the iCloud restore no music returned pinned to my Google Play Music app.

No, pinned songs won't be backed up to iCloud. This would be a huge waste of your own personal storage and Google wouldn't mark pinned songs as something to be backed up. Same with offline songs in Spotify. You just have to download it again. You have a relatively small library (5gb) and even that would take you over the free iCloud storage you get from Apple.

Enabling Google Play in iCloud backup will probably only backup logins and preferences and things that are personal to you. There is no need for each user to backup songs as there are central servers each can download from, saving massive unnecessary duplication.

 

[blairh]

No, pinned songs won't be backed up to iCloud. This would be a huge waste of your own personal storage and Google wouldn't mark pinned songs as something to be backed up. Same with offline songs in Spotify. You just have to download it again. You have a relatively small library (5gb) and even that would take you over the free iCloud storage you get from Apple.

Enabling Google Play in iCloud backup will probably only backup logins and preferences and things that are personal to you. There is no need for each user to backup songs as there are central servers each can download from, saving massive unnecessary duplication.

Are you certain? This is actually a really big deal for me. Even though I only had 5 GB pinned I was planning on pinning about 25 GB more. My entire collection is 51 GB currently.

Being able to automatically re-download the pinned music is a huge deal for me. For example if I need to restore from an iCloud backup in the future or if I get a new iPhone say in the fall of 2016, I want to be able to get all my music back on my phone locally stored without having to pin it all again.

 

[gordon1234]

Ultimately it's up to the app developers what does and does not get backed up to iCloud. iCloud will by default back up all content for an app, but the app developers can mark certain data to exclude from backups. It would make sense for Google to exclude this data since it's already stored on Google's servers, and users only get 5 GB for iCloud backups without paying extra.

It would probably be nice if Google could remember the songs you've marked to use offline and download them all at once when you reinstall, but it sounds like they don't (for the record, neither does Apple's own iTunes Match.) there probably isn't much you can do about this.

What I would suggest is to create a playlist specifically for music you want offline. Google Play lets you download the entire contents of a playlist with one tap, so you could have an "Offline" playlist, and whenever you need to reinstall, just tap the button to download the entire playlist.

 

[GreyOS]

blairh, I'm pretty certain.

gordon1234 covers all the main points. Google could make repinning previously pinned items easier, and may do in future, but seems like they don't currently. Best option now is to create a playlist you can pin in a few taps. Redownloading songs after restoring won't make the overall restoration process longer because you will not have had to download a significantly larger backup that has the songs.

 

[blairh]

What I would suggest is to create a playlist specifically for music you want offline. Google Play lets you download the entire contents of a playlist with one tap, so you could have an "Offline" playlist, and whenever you need to reinstall, just tap the button to download the entire playlist.

I didn't see your reply or the other above because you didn't quote me. I just came back to update the situation to aid potentially anyone else in my situation.

So I ended up doing exactly as you described. I actually came across an article online a few days ago suggesting just this. Seems to essentially be a workaround to my issue.

This took me some time though. I wanted to pin roughly half my collection. (11k songs is my entire collection.) There currently is a 1k song limit for playlists. I had to create 6 playlists, which took time. And then pinning them to my phone took roughly an hour each. Also the space taken up on my iPhone is much greater than say what the music takes up on my HDD. For example I pinned roughly 5,500 songs. That takes up about 40 GB of space on my iPhone. My entire collection, 11k songs, takes up 51 GB of space on my external HDD. Obviously we are talking apples to oranges here, but it did surprise me.

Moving forward I will place new music added to my collection into my last playlist which is already pinned and has room for more songs. What I learned is that the new music I add to my collection will be pinned automatically if I add it to a current pinned playlist. For future restores I have my playlists (which simply act as placeholders for music I want pinned) already set so I can get my music back onto my phone by simply tapping a button. (Albeit 6 times and waiting an hour each time.) Hopefully song limits will increase in the future for playlists so I can create new playlists that will cut down on how many I need to have in total.

Edit. I just double checked. My 11k song collection takes up 65 GB on my HDD. So pinning roughly half that makes more sense at 40 GB on my iPhone.