Cannot find where Google Play Music stores downloaded files (different from similar posts) About a year or two ago, I decided to use Google Play Music as my "cloud host", so I took all of my old music that I'd had sitting on my computer, and uploaded it to Google Play Music.  This is all my own purchased music, mostly originally from CDs (I'm older).

I now want to download some songs onto my Android device not simply so that I can listen to them, but so that I can have the .mp3 files.  (E.g., to edit one down so it can be my wake up alarm, that sort of stuff.)

I cannot seem to find where Google Play Music put any of these.  I have not rooted my device, and while I could go there, I'd rather avoid it, if possible.  I saw other posts mentioning:


/&lt;external card&gt;/Android/data/com.google.android.music/cache or
/&lt;external card&gt;/Android/data/com.google.android.music/files or
/data/data/...


There is nothing in the first 2 directories, and it seems I need root access to get at the last directory.  I read some similar posts that pointed to these directories, but some others that said this was for older versions.  My version is 6.0.1984S.2219729.  And, if it matters, I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 and Android version 5.0.1

It's really obnoxious that these apps refuse to play with each other nicely.  Google and Samsung just have to kiss and make up, because it's ridiculous that Google apps can only talk to Google, and Samsung can only talk to Samsung.  I shouldn't have to scurry around looking for all this.  Desktop / Laptop OS's don't have this problem.  It's an invented problem to help ensure monopoly ecosystems and frustrated customers.  :-(
In the settings of Google Play Music, if you have it set to cache on the external SD card, your cache location will be /external_sd/Android/data/com.google.android.music/files/music/.

If you have it use the internal storage, the path will be /sdcard/Android/data/com.google.android.music/files/music.

Note that these files are named [some-id].mp3, like 124.mp3. So just copying them from this location will be difficult to determine what song they are. Not only that, as GiantTree mentions, the files are encrypted, so even if you copy them off, you cannot play them. It requires Google Play Music to play them.

Here is a screenshot of my files on the external sdcard that I navigated to within droidexplorer. 



And Here is using Windows MTP to browse the files.