How do I upload my .M4A (Apple Lossless) files to Google Music?

Question

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

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.