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Google Music does not support .M4A (Apple Lossless) files and so Google's Music Manager skips them. How do I upload those?

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  • Just convert them?
    – Griffin
    Jun 21, 2013 at 0:21
  • This question-answer is basically here to document a way to bulk-convert them with ffmpeg, a free tool :)
    – Ilya
    Jun 21, 2013 at 1:30
  • It's Aug 29 now, the m4a files are listed as supported, but my Music Manager is still not uploading them. That's weird. Aug 29, 2013 at 18:45
  • @FlorinAndrei: m4a is just another extension for the MP4 container format. It can contain a lot of different data streams (both video and audio). The most frequent audio codec is probably AAC, a modern lossy audio compression. It’s what Google Music (and everyone, really) supports. ALAC, Apple Lossless Audio Codec, on the other hand, isn’t widely supported.
    – Daniel B
    Oct 17, 2016 at 7:33

2 Answers 2

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The easier way is probably to bite the bullet and convert them to a supported format. First, download ffmpeg -- on Windows, get the ZIP package and unpack it.

Next, open a command prompt window:

 cd /d %USERPROFILE%\Music

(or change to whatever directory your music is at)

mkdir %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\blah

This will create a blah folder on your desktop.

for /r %f in (*.m4a) do \path\to\ffmpeg.exe -i "%f" -acodec libmp3lame
-ab 320k "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\blah\%~nf.mp3"

This will convert the files to 320kbps MP3s. We use MP3 and not a lossless format (e.g. FLAC) since Google Music transcodes FLAC to 320kbps MP3s anyway. Anyway, this shouldn't take too much time on a modern machine.

Finally, add the blah folder on your desktop to Music Manager and let it upload. Afterwards, you can remove the folder from Music Manager and delete it -- the music is already in the cloud.

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If you are just uploading them for backup purposes,and don't want to lose their format. just changing the extension to mp3 will allow you to upload them.

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  • But they won't play in Google Music, right?
    – Ilya
    Jun 21, 2013 at 15:33
  • Correct,It would serve as a backup , google will not play flac but you would be able to download them onto any device you had and play it locally though.it would preserve the format if you wanted to have google play it you would have to convert it to a compatible format.
    – ubunoob
    Jun 26, 2013 at 12:26

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