While not Chromecast-related, Plex supports Android Auto as well. You can access your library remotely through your server at home, and it even supports lossless audio formats such as FLAC. The setup’s a bit burdensome given the hardware involved, but it’s worth the effort if you want to access your music from a wide range of streaming devices.
This also unlocks some extra features, such as artist metadata, volume leveling, crossfades between tracks, and visualizations. If you subscribe to Plex Pass, which costs $5 per month, $40 per year, or $120 for life, all of Plex’s apps are free.
While it doesn’t support voice commands beyond playing and stopping, Plex does let you cast to external speakers.Īs for the costs, Plex’s desktop web app is free to use, even with Chromecast devices, but the iOS and Android apps cost $5 each to remove playback time limitations. This even works with any Google Home speaker groups you’ve created. Plex’s iOS, Android, and desktop web apps all support casting, so you can use them to send music to your Google Home speakers or Chromecast devices.
If you have a desktop computer, Nvidia Shield TV Pro, or compatible NAS device, you can install Plex’s Media Server software and host your music files on it, then play the music through Plex’s streaming devices. 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.