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?

Solution

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.

Comments

[Griffin]

Just convert them?

[Priya]

This question-answer is basically here to document a way to bulk-convert them with ffmpeg, a free tool :)

[Florin Andrei]

It's Aug 29 now, the m4a files are listed as supported, but my Music Manager is still not uploading them. That's weird.

[Daniel B]

@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.

[Priya]

But they won't play in Google Music, right?

[ubunoob]

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.