Live data from Hacker News

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

support.google.com

271–280 of 358 posts

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

#271
Here's the bit that confuses me. I have "youtube premium". I go there, and there's no link to youtube music. So I google "youtube music", and it says:

"Get Music Premium to listen ad-free, offline & with your screen off. You have YouTube Premium"

Are they two different things?

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

#272
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In previous stories on here about Google's tendency to start stuff, shut it down arbitrarily, and compete with itself pointlessly, I recall seeing comments purporting to be from longtime Googlers saying that the reason this happens is at least in part due to Google's incentive structure. They reward people for creating "new" things, whether they're the same as something they've already got or not, and allocate very f…

Google play music wasn't really started at Google it was mostly acquired from Songza

The Songza acquisition happened in 2014. Google Play Music goes back to 2011.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songza#History

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

#273
I don't get how google can fuck themselves so much closing used products without having a proper replacement. I have bough many albums on the google play music store with the promise to be able to stream whenever I wan't. I don't want to fall on the subscription hype, and used to bough an album each month instead of paying for a subscription. Of course I can download them and se them offline, but for a company like google to be unable to maintain a basic promised service and instead closing it seems like an insult.

I was experimenting on having all my music on my nas and streaming directly from there instead of relying on another subscription service, so I think I will try to move everything to that (currently the only thing I lack is streaming directly to my tv, because i don't have that use case often).

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

#274
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Figures it doesn't work. They don't care. To every Google employee reading this: your company sucks. Tell that to your manager. With the exception of Youtube, I will never use Google entertainment products again. No Stadia, no Google Play Movies. I don't know what their vision is for product, but whatever it is subtracts from the world. I was worried a decade ago when I saw music moving into the cloud. Now my fears a…

Anyone using Stadia is risking all their game purchases getting lost when it shuts down.

I lived through OnLive -- from beta to shutdown -- and that is exactly why I'm putting zero money into these cloud-only game licenses, unless it's a Netflix-style subscription. When the time comes for shutdown, they won't do the courtesy of granting one free license for that game on another platform, e.g.: Steam, Xbox Live, PSN. The purchases will just be gone and people will point at the ToS.

The only way IMO is GeForce Now-style services, where your existing digital library is honored. That or Netflix-style subscriptions like Game Pass Ultimate.

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

#275
post #102

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 playli…

Exactly this. Google Play Music was great because you could host your collection with them and mix it with their streaming library fairly seamlessly. Since the announcement of GPM's demise I haven't found a single other platform that fills this niche.

I've switched to hosting my own Emby server and buying music from Amazon.

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

#277

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.

Youtube musics forward button doesn't work if you use a keyboard with media keys, since it doesn't forward to the next screen.

In addition, the entire layout uses a single row, sized for mobile on my ultrawide monitor.

How Google makes such a bad product I don't know. I switched to them because Spotify kept breaking their interface. Now they do the same.

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's great right now for you. You don't worry about Google deciding to go about things totally differently in 18 months and shut it down? I don't pay for Google products because they have a shorter shelf-life than a bottle of ketchup.

I paid them monthly to rent access to music. If they shot down I shall be forced to go elsewhere, none the worse of.

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

#280
I subscribed to Google Play Music All-Access for years and wouldn't have cancelled[1] if not for regional pricing making Spotify half the price. The music selection was far greater than Spotify and the like, I could upload and match my purchases elsewhere, and their radio algorithm was actually really good. (I sorely miss it after using Spotify's)

But YouTube Music is just a mess. I migrated my library to YTM and my experience is like the rest, but worse:

* You can't migrate to brand (aka alias) accounts. All of my likes, uploads, favorites, recommendation profile are on my alias but to listen to my music I have to switch to my real name account. Oh, but aliases can still use YT Music, so there's virtually no reason for this restriction.

* Switching accounts is for both YT and YT Music. So if I switch back to my alias on [normal] YT, the already-open YT Music tab will stop the music and ask me to switch back or refresh.

* All of my music poured into "Liked Videos". Except only about ~180 songs are there and I had over a thousand saved, if not thousands. No idea where the rest are.

* Some of the songs are "not available in your country" but if I search for it and find the official music video, that one is.

* This applied to GPM too, but: no desktop app. You can pretend the web app is a desktop app (and it's a little smoother than GPM at least) but it's still much more taxing than even a webview app like Spotify's.

[1] Fun fact: if you unsubscribe from GPM All-Access, your liked/saved songs that aren't uploaded disappear but are still in the DB, so you can't even see them. I don't know if they're part of Google Takeout, but when I moved to Spotify that meant I had to remember what songs I liked.

Post reply on HN