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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

#101

Post by jkaplowitz »

kyrra wrote: post #82
xeromal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow really. Any music player I've used plays in the background. I throw in some headphones and it plays without the screen being on. I'm not really sure how else it can go in the background but I know I'm missing something. lol

See: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6308116?hl=en > Play videos on your mobile device while using other apps or when your screen is off. Background play is available on YouTube, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids mobile apps (if these apps are available in your location). They only allowed background play on Youtube with a subscription.

I believe it's a subscription feature for YouTube Music as well. The link you provided indicates that this requires a YouTube Premium subscription, though a bit more digging on that page and https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/6313552?hl=en suggests that the minimum required subscription is actually YouTube Music Premium (this is included as part of YouTube Premium).

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

#102

Post by axaxs »

Ugh. Unlike some others, my 'migration' worked, but YT Music sucks. Sorry to be blunt and short, but that's how I best describe it. It's in every way worse than GPM for my use. I legally buy songs, and just want to stream them. YT Music is obsessed with, after playing an upload, playing random music with ads in it, rather than say, playing the next upload. The only thing that works without much complaints is a playlist, so that's good I guess. I can't even figure out if/how I can purchase music from it, which is really annoying.

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

#103

Post by jkaplowitz »

filoleg wrote: post #77
graeme wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not quite right. Messages on iPhone was always messages. Mac’s version was called ichat and was separate. Apple then cancelled it and merged it into messages. Messages itself never had a name change and was always larger than ichat. Likewise, the itunes music store still exists! It is a place where you can buy and download music. It’s not the same service as Apple Music, which is a streaming music service.

>Likewise, the itunes music store still exists! It is a place where you can buy and download music. It’s not the same service as Apple Music, which is a streaming music service. That's actually an interesting point that I've never considered before, even though I was aware of it. iTunes has always been kept separate from Apple Music, with no evident plans to merge those in sight, while Google Play Music was used for…

iTunes, other than the iTunes Store, is indeed gone now and merged into Apple Music:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210200

But as that article briefly mentions, the iTunes Store continues to exist and can be reached from the Apple Music app. I suspect this will change in a future macOS release, though I don't work for Apple and have no inside info.

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

#104

Post by axaxs »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #63

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

I'm looking as well. I came across asti.ga, which looks promising as it can use a variety of cloud backends, but haven't got around to using it yet. I'm actually also considering a plex setup.

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

#105

Post by perryizgr8 »

kyrra wrote: post #14
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…

> YTM lets you do background music or videos, which is not something you could ever really do with GPM

The entire point of a music player is to play music in the background.

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

#106

Post by im_down_w_otp »

I just removed my Google Home devices and migrated my music service to Tidal because of this whole YouTube Music debacle. Went like this:

1. Suddenly my Google Home would only use YouTube Music when playing to the Chromecast on my TV.

2. YouTube Music, among a bunch of other terrible UX issues around how it considers music to be organized/related, has the extremely annoying quality of always playing videos of the music instead of just the music.

3. Turns out there's an option in your account settings to tell it to only play audio, no videos.

4. Also, turns out this setting has zero effect when playing through a Chromecast, and thus the damnable videos persist.

5. So, I said, "Eff it!" and signed up for a Hi-Fi Tidal account (the audio quality improvement is immediately apparent, BTW) to replace my Google Play Music... er, YouTube Music instigated brewing household clusterf*ck (the chance was screwing with my wife & two little kids' ability to listen to music with the ease and predictability they had with Google Play Music).

6. I can cast Tidal to the Chromecast from my phone, so I figured I could link it in my Google Home device, and our household music situation would be basically back to normal. Nope...NOPE!

7. You can't set Tidal as a music service for your Google Home, which turned me into the family's sporadic impromptu disc jockey throughout the day, and entirely broke the kids' ability to manage their own music enjoyment.

8. Turns out Amazon's device ecosystem doesn't have this problem, so the Chromecast got replaced with a Fire TV stick and an Alexa pod.

In one felled swoop, via the most utterly existentially dubious product rollout and migration, Google managed to motivate me to eat the switching cost of replacing 100% of their hardware and 100% of their media services from my family's life. Truly a spectacular "own goal" on Google's behalf... and for what? What is even the point of YouTube Music?

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

#108

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #94
ewmiller wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disco…

Yea, as someone who listens to Nightcore/Japanese music, Youtube Music is by far the easiest way to listen and discover music. And the download offline feature has always worked great for me, a 100 songs uploads periodically to match what I've been listening to, so I don't run into the classic issue of using the same "I don't have service" music playlist.

Not that I don't get why people complain about the move (it is a dramatically different app), but Google is the only one with the actual usage numbers, and honestly I've never met someone who has used it. I'm guessing they weren't the best, while Youtube has some of the best usage numbers of any Western service.

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

#109

Post by patrickaljord »

ElijahLynn wrote: post #93

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.

I have videos of recipes and comic shows in my Liked Music. You would think youtube Google had better AI to detect this kind of stuff. Makes think many of the videos being wrongly censored/demonetized on youtube may really be because of faulty AI detection of the content. I do enjoy the fact that I can get all those live video music available on Youtube and not on any other platform.

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

#110

Post by lern_too_spel »

kyrra wrote: post #14
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…

GPM always allowed playing music in the background, even for free. YTM charging for it is a regression.
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