Google Play Music, Music Play Store and Music Manager are going away • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Play Music, Music Play Store and Music Manager are going away

#11

Post by abawany » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #7

I'm a Google Play subscriber, and I'm pissed, because YouTube Music was always forcing videos on me, and was harder to use for offline listening (stopping music when I locked the screen, like other people). What is better to switch to right now, YouTube Music, or Spotify?

I moved my purchased music to YT Music in additional to having previously downloaded it but I am not super happy: the old model of buying a song or an album and then downloading it seems to no longer be an option in this craven new world - I guess they don't want my money if it does not arrive vassal-like in fixed monthly amounts.

Re: Google Play Music, Music Play Store and Music Manager are going away

#12

Post by et1337 » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

ozmbie wrote: post #6

How is it that Google create/rebrand/close so many music and chat services over the years. While Apple have a single message service (iMessage) and a single music service (Apple Music) that have been consistently branded with constant growth and show no signs of being shut down? As a consumer I have no idea what’s going on with some areas of Google’s products. It’s a major turn off.

iTunes would like a word with you...

Re: Google Play Music, Music Play Store and Music Manager are going away

#13

Post by city41 » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #7

I'm a Google Play subscriber, and I'm pissed, because YouTube Music was always forcing videos on me, and was harder to use for offline listening (stopping music when I locked the screen, like other people). What is better to switch to right now, YouTube Music, or Spotify?

I switched from Spotify to Amazon Music Unlimited, as I found it to be much less buggy.

Re: Google Play Music, Music Play Store and Music Manager are going away

#14

Post by kyrra » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

ozmbie wrote: post #6

How is it that Google create/rebrand/close so many music and chat services over the years. While Apple have a single message service (iMessage) and a single music service (Apple Music) that have been consistently branded with constant growth and show no signs of being shut down? As a consumer I have no idea what’s going on with some areas of Google’s products. It’s a major turn off.

(Googler, opinions are my own)

Agreed that it is annoying, but its interesting to look back at how we got here. Google Play Music (GPM) launched in 2011. To get music on here, I'm guessing that team had to sign contracts with the various publishers and record studios. The onboarding and licensing terms of those were likely entirely around this music streaming service.

Then you have Youtube. It's been a video hub for anything, and other those 9 years since GPM launched, it has become a place where lots of people listen to music (watching music videos or the like). You have companies like Vevo that publish music content there. I'd guess Youtube has different contracts with those companies that have evolved over time about how music can be played.

So over these past 9 years, 2 products that had little overlap, have started to overlap more and more. As youtube expanded, it started butting into GPM's world. That likely was odd for Google for contracts and licensing of that content. Youtube Music (YTM) likely allows them to do it all under one silo now. Plus, YTM lets you do background music or videos, which is not something you could ever really do with GPM.

Re: Google Play Music, Music Play Store and Music Manager are going away

#15

Post by necubi » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

This is a bummer. I gather that I'm one of the few users of Google Play Music, so it's not surprising it's being killed. But it was one of the few streaming services that had the ability to upload your own music, a good catalog, and widespread device support.

YouTube music is OK, but worse in a bunch of respects. It separates out your uploaded music into a separate library (admittedly the matching in Play Music was always a bit wonky, but better than just giving up on the problem) which makes finding and managing music much more annoying. The UI is also really, really slow. Tt loads a single page of albums / songs / whatever at a time and takes a second to load the next one.

This can turn the process of scrolling through your albums, which has been effortless since iTunes debuted, into a multi-minute process. I've been hoping ever since they announced the switch that they would improve this stuff but it doesn't look like they've made any progress.

Re: Google Play Music, Music Play Store and Music Manager are going away

#16

Post by gambler » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

ozmbie wrote: post #6

How is it that Google create/rebrand/close so many music and chat services over the years. While Apple have a single message service (iMessage) and a single music service (Apple Music) that have been consistently branded with constant growth and show no signs of being shut down? As a consumer I have no idea what’s going on with some areas of Google’s products. It’s a major turn off.

Apple is a hardware/design company. Google is ad tech company. They have fundamentally different motivations.

Re: Google Play Music, Music Play Store and Music Manager are going away

#17

Post by temp667 » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

ozmbie wrote: post #6

How is it that Google create/rebrand/close so many music and chat services over the years. While Apple have a single message service (iMessage) and a single music service (Apple Music) that have been consistently branded with constant growth and show no signs of being shut down? As a consumer I have no idea what’s going on with some areas of Google’s products. It’s a major turn off.

I am a personal gsuite user, and migrated multiple companies to gsuite over 10 years now (?). That means I tried to force everyone on to hangouts / chat / meet / duo / allo / etc etc. It's not just a turn off in a personal space. It's at the point I have given up on trying to get folks to standardize on google's products.

Google just did a slack competitor, but to click the screen share button (very common in slack to want to talk and screen share to collab) you are forced over in to meet land, which forces you out of your chat and defaults to video (not wanted). It's just such a total mess its totally incredible.

Re: Google Play Music, Music Play Store and Music Manager are going away

#18

Post by dlandis » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 8:19 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #7

I'm a Google Play subscriber, and I'm pissed, because YouTube Music was always forcing videos on me, and was harder to use for offline listening (stopping music when I locked the screen, like other people). What is better to switch to right now, YouTube Music, or Spotify?

If you watch YouTube, then probably it's best to stick with Google since you get ad-free YouTube with your subscription (I think?) . Otherwise probably Spotify is better.

Re: Google Play Music, Music Play Store and Music Manager are going away

#19

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 8:20 PM UTC

bla3 wrote: post #5

Google Play Music wasn't very popular, but it was surprisingly good. YouTube Music is ok, but it lacks that quality without a name and has many small glitches that make it much less pleasant to use.

> YouTube Music is ok

No, its quite bad. In addition to being flat-out buggy (I've had it multiple times in the last week just decide to switch to a playlist it invented rather than the one it was directed to play), it doesn't support basic music playing functionality like song or playlist repeat, and (surprisingly) its Google Assistant integration is awful, forcing you to use casting from a different device for basic tasks with an Assistant-powered speaker.

Re: Google Play Music, Music Play Store and Music Manager are going away

#20

Post by Godel_unicode » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 8:20 PM UTC

et1337 wrote: post #12

ozmbie wrote: post #6

How is it that Google create/rebrand/close so many music and chat services over the years. While Apple have a single message service (iMessage) and a single music service (Apple Music) that have been consistently branded with constant growth and show no signs of being shut down? As a consumer I have no idea what’s going on with some areas of Google’s products. It’s a major turn off.

iTunes would like a word with you...

And ping. And FaceTime.