It’s the End of the Road for Google Play Music

This month, Google will finally take the final step in replacing Play Music with YouTube Music: It is deleting all user data in its former music service.

“On February 24, 2021, we will delete all of your Google Play Music data,” an email to Google Play Music users reads. “This includes your music library with any uploads, purchases, and anything you’ve added from Google Play Music. After this date, there will be no way to recover it.”

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Before that data, however, you can still download your Google Play Music library and other data via Google Takeout. And you can, of course, transfer your library to YouTube Music. A Google support document has the details.

As you may recall, Google has plan plotting the transition away from Google Play Music since it launched YouTube Music in 2018. Since then, there have been many messages to customers about the shift, and Google replaced the Play Music app with YouTube Music in Android 10 in late 2019 and Google stopped selling music in late 2020.

I made the transition to YouTube Music in August 2020 and prefer it to Google Play Music, but for one missing feature: The ability to control Sonos speakers directly from the app.

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Conversation 15 comments

  • compsciguy31415

    07 February, 2021 - 11:23 am

    <p>I think YTM's interface is inferior to GPM, specifically around sorting and playlist management. Once you get past a few hundred songs in a playlist, it becomes very difficult to manage, so I have used a 3rd party service (soundiiz) to do so. At this point, Spotify premium has the best interface, but I am a YT Premium subscriber, so I get YTM included and I don't want to give Spotify even more market share if I do not have to. ?</p>

    • vladimir

      Premium Member
      07 February, 2021 - 12:09 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#612149">In reply to CompSciGuy31415:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>I fully understand not wanting to pay twice, but what is the problem with Spotify's market share? It's a purely music service and it's the only fair competitor vs. all other services by amazon, apple and google that are heavily subsidized</p>

      • wright_is

        Premium Member
        08 February, 2021 - 9:34 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#612152">In reply to Vladimir:</a></em></blockquote><p>It isn't purely music. It is buying up podcasts to be Spotify exclusives left-right-and-centre. It also does audio books.</p>

  • scovious

    07 February, 2021 - 3:26 pm

    <p>Countless songs and music videos have been hosted illegally on YouTube for 15 years. Why pay?</p>

    • yoshi

      Premium Member
      07 February, 2021 - 5:52 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#612205">In reply to scovious:</a></em></blockquote><p>That’s the spirit.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      08 February, 2021 - 9:54 am

      So one crime justifies the other? 🙂

      • George Rae

        08 February, 2021 - 8:44 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#612316">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><blockquote><em>Its not stealing, it's sticking it to the big evil corporations Bla..Bla..Bla 🙂 </em></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • crunchyfrog

    07 February, 2021 - 6:17 pm

    <p>I invested in GPM for a long time and I knew this was coming so I converted my library and moved over to YTM but I gotta say, Google really should have finished YTM before pulling this stunt. The CarPlay experience is terrible and the interface needs a lot of work. Stuff that I could easily pull up or make a quick playlist… it's just a chore now. If I did not have a good bundle deal with YouTube Premium I'd quit their service altogether.</p>

  • ghostrider

    08 February, 2021 - 2:44 am

    <p>I was very hesitant about switching from GPM to YM last year, but had no choice. YM was certainly lacking in features initially (way off even feature parity with GPM), and it's integration into Android Auto was poor. Things have improved a lot though, and it's very usable now. I still preferred the old GPM web interface, but the YM curated playlists are actually pretty good. It's not perfect, but it's getting better, and the family plan is still very good VFM.</p>

  • emanon2121

    08 February, 2021 - 8:58 am

    <p>Youtube music is bad. Well… Not bad just far off other music apps on Android. In fact Spotify is a much more pleasant experience on Android auto than Youtube music is.</p>

  • glenn8878

    08 February, 2021 - 10:50 am

    <p>It would appear streaming is preferred over buying music. I prefer it free. As they say, free means you're the product. But free music is what I did before streaming except for buying a bare minimum of iTunes music.</p>

  • JerryH

    Premium Member
    10 February, 2021 - 1:34 pm

    <p>Still have an annoying issue with YouTube music: it often doesn't shuffle a playlist. You look and the shuffle button is active. You press it again and it stays active (white colored) and it then immediately jumps to a new song and then doesn't shuffle anymore. Press the shuffle button again and it goes and plays the same song it did before. It does not always do this, but does it with an annoying frequency. It is nice that the app sometimes has lyric, but it doesn't ever send those to the Nest Home Hub when it is being casted too so they aren't super useful. It isn't like you hold you phone and look at the app while it is playing music…</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      11 February, 2021 - 8:53 am

      This sounds like something a random app update will fix.

  • ZeroPageX

    16 February, 2021 - 7:58 pm

    <p>I'm still waiting for that feature parity they used to talk about. :(</p>

  • zaman200

    20 January, 2022 - 9:04 am

    <p>Great post for Google Play Music. I would recommend to use MusConv tool.You can transfer all your playlists to any of your music service without any issues.</p>

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