RIP Google Play Music: 2011 – 2020
For more than 9 years, I used Google Play Music as my main music streaming service, both free and paid versions. I last blogged about it here 4.5 years ago. And now as of the first part of December 2020, it is gone.
The RIP notice that shows up when you open the Google Play Music app on your phone
The original purpose of starting with Google Play Music was their personal music locker, which you could upload up to 50,000 of your own songs. They matched what you had to what they had – sometimes replacing the unedited version of the song with the edited version (a few extra unnecessary steps to fix those broken songs) – and it made it a free streaming service with your own music. It was great but then I wanted to listen to music I didn’t own so I decided it was worth paying the $10 a month. And I liked the service a lot. Great interface, easy to find songs of my own and songs that were not my own.
Then over the last 3 years, it became evident Google Play Music was going to be replaced by YouTube Music. As the above image suggests, I did transfer my Google Play Music Library over to YouTube Music, just in case I decided to stay. (I also did a download of my entire music library and have it stored on my Drobo)
Google Play Music mobile screen calling it quits
Enter YouTube Music
YouTube Music replaced Google Play Music
And now we have YouTube Music. The shit show that it is. Some executive decided they were going to brand YouTube onto other products. So far, except for the cost, YouTube TV has been a really great branding. Thanks Google for not fucking that up….. yet.
Many great features of Google Play Music never made it over to YouTube Music like the A-Z list on the right side and an easy way to show the songs you have in your uploaded library. And the list goes on. You still get YouTube Premium (no ads), which actually this is how it’s billed – not as a streaming music service. For now, I’m sticking with it. I might end up paying for Spotify or Pandora, but I would need to use those apps more often to push me to using them more full time.
The only downside to many of these streaming music services is the number of concurrent devices you can listen on. For example, YouTube Music only lets you listen on one device at a time. If I am playing a song on my Google Home Nest speaker, and then I decide I want to listen on the mobile app, it turns off the song playing on the speaker. Same with the web. As soon as I start playing a song on the web, my mobile app stops playing. Maybe one day they will find a way for us paying subscribers to let us listen on more than once device at a time.
And if/when I do stop paying for YouTube Music, I will still get to keep the biggest benefit which is my personal library that was uploaded that I can access on the web or the mobile app anytime (and even play on a Google Home Nest speaker).
Did You Migrate?
Anyone else make the migration from Google Play Music to YouTube Music? Any positives you can point out that I might find useful?