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

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

#91

Post by xnx »

laverya wrote: post #83
Vermeulen wrote: post #21

They've had years to fix all the issues people have had with this - and yet everyone still hates it (based on Reddit / App reviews). Playing music offline is broken, browsing playlists is insanely slow, and it lacks so many basic features of GPM/other services (like actual random shuffle and not a smart radio that plays the same 10 songs). Combining Youtube Likes with the music thumbs up makes no sense - I now have l…

> Combining Youtube Likes with the music thumbs up makes no sense - I now have lecture videos that randomly play while trying to shuffle my library If there was a way to say "no, this isn't music", this would be easily solved. But Google's fascination with "AI-only" solutions won't let that happen. (You'd think someone would be happy to have an extra source of training data!)

Another unfortunate side effect is my "ocean waves" alarm clock playlist is always queued up in Youtube Music as a song after I wake up.

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

#92

Post by graeme »

ewmiller wrote: post #71
graeme wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it didn’t. Itunes music still exists as a separate service and you can still buy music there. Apple Music’s streaming service is a separate offering that has grown larger than iTunes.

What the person you’re replying to means, is that Apple Music was added on top of iTunes as a new service rather than iTunes being scrapped completely. If Google were to do the same thing, then google play music would still be around and not be getting killed in favor of youtube music.

That’s a fair point. Though in this case aren’t google play music and youtube music substantially similar services?

Google’s reputation is that they will have 2-3 services with the same functionality. Whereas there are pretty legitimate business reasons you want want to make a streaming business distinct from a legacy content purchasing business.

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

#93

Post by ElijahLynn »

And FWIW, the migration doesn't work. The "thumbs up" playlist goes into YT Music "Liked music" which includes all sorts of other YouTube "music-ish" videos that we have liked over the years and the order is all jacked up, plus mixed with all that other stuff.

So your "Liked Music" is now, not what you intended. The migration was super botched by the product team because of this.

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

#94

Post by CamelCaseName »

ewmiller wrote: post #59
Vermeulen wrote: post #21

They've had years to fix all the issues people have had with this - and yet everyone still hates it (based on Reddit / App reviews). Playing music offline is broken, browsing playlists is insanely slow, and it lacks so many basic features of GPM/other services (like actual random shuffle and not a smart radio that plays the same 10 songs). Combining Youtube Likes with the music thumbs up makes no sense - I now have l…

I haven’t heard a single consumer express enthusiasm for the switch to YouTube music. Anyone I’ve casually talked to about it is dismissive and doesn’t really understand what it's even trying to be. If anybody has heard anything from a user's perspective that is in favor of this, I would love to hear that argument. Otherwise I can only assume that this was a typical Google move where product people internally pushed…

Then let me be the first.

YouTube Music has the one feature I care about: A catalogue that includes everything from well-known music from top artists, to the random indie music that got a grand total of 10,000 views on YouTube when it was published 8 years ago.

Sure I could download these songs (assuming RIAA takes its teeth out of youtube-dl) and upload them to most music players, but YouTube Music facilitates discovery and does all the work for me.

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

#95

Post by harshitaneja »

xiphias2 wrote: post #76
kyrra wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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…

I just read that YTM has only 256 bit AAC just like YouTube. Going down in audio quality is a step in the wrong direction. There's just no point in installing 5G in so many countries when the encoding bit rates are going down for services.

Non audiophiles don't require more than 256kbps which is about the highest you can do for AAC anyway. Sure 320kbps can on some occasions be better on consumer hardware but I am not sure most will notice a difference. So maybe 320kbps but I am really skeptical of people who need more. Obviously there is a lot more to digital audio than bitrate.

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

#96

Post by jeffbee »

So, everything works for me on youtube music, except the integration with Sonos lacks the "start radio" feature, which is 99% of what I use my Sonos for. If they don't gain this feature before shutting down GPM, then I'm going to cancel my YT sub.

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

#97

Post by splonk »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #63

Anyone got any good alternatives for someone who wants to listen to their offline music collection from anywhere?

I migrated to iBroadcast. It's free, and it seems to fit my fairly minimal needs. In particular, it allowed uploading everything I dumped from GPM (~7k tracks, apparently), and allows specifying which songs should always be available offline on an Android device. Presumably it has the usual streaming features and online music acquisition features as well, but I don't use any of them.

The client has an option that claims to do some normalization that I hoped would prevent large deltas in volume between tracks - in practice this seems worse than what I got from the GPM player. I mostly listen to long heterogenous playlists on shuffle, so this probably wouldn't matter to people who listen to full albums.

I believe they have some monetization plan involving allowing higher bitrate playback, but I don't think I can really tell the difference.

I did try migrating to Youtube Music first and gave up after one too many annoyances.

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

#98

Post by babayega2 »

So, the migration doesn't work. it fails to see the musics I have on file in my phone. Also, I'm in a third world country (Burundi) where a lot of the musics are blocked for being played. I purchased an album in the old Google Play Music but the new Youtube Music doesn't allow me to see my purchased music without a VPN. This is really incompetence from Google.

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

#99

Post by modernlearner »

mark-r wrote: post #44

I've used Google Play Music as the player for the mp3 files I've copied to my Android phone, ever since I got the phone. Never touched the online capabilities. It was perfect, did everything I wanted just the way I liked it. Then suddenly one day it was just gone. Anybody have a recommendation for an mp3 player app that works mostly the same?

I had the same experience. I just went in and the app does nothing. I had to disable updates and disable the app completely and find Vanilla Music Player to replace it.

https://github.com/vanilla-music/vanilla

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

#100

Post by tsumnia »

I miss original Songza. Google, could you just let me have original Songza back? You killed it with your merge to Google Music, and now its only remnants are titles to some of the playlists you try to hide and never recommend.

Example: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=RDCLAK5uy_lmCjwO3-5S...

I know Game of Thrones is super not relevant anymore, but THIS is the kind of stuff that made Songza so popular you bought them out.

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