A Little Google Takeout (Premium)

Thanks to my transition from Google Play Music to YouTube Music, Google reminded me of a feature called Takeout that needs more attention. This is Google’s system for allowing users of its products to download, backup, and reuse the data that the firm has collected and, in some cases, delete it.

According to the Google Takeout website, the service lets you “export a copy of [the] content in your Google Account to back it up or use it with a service outside of Google.” And the amount of data it has---at least in my case---is a bit astonishing. Given how long it took me to download my Google Play Music data---more on that below---I strongly recommend not sticking with the default, which is to download everything. But it’s certainly worth examining the list.

Among the data I can download is data related to my Google Calendar schedule, my Chrome bookmarks, history, and settings, my contacts, files I’ve stored in Drive, my Google Fit activity, my Google Fi phone number and voice mails, and much, much more.

But I was there just for the music. The email I received from Google notes that Google Play Music will shut down between October and December this year. And that because I’d already transferred to YouTube Music, the firm wanted to inform me of some differences in the services and what I could expect going forward. One of the bullet items in this email noted the following:

Google Play Music library and data. In addition to transferring your library to YouTube Music, you have the option to download any music that you’ve purchased or uploaded to Google Play Music, as well as a list of the tracks, playlists, and radio stations in your library. We’ll notify you before you’ll lose access to your Google Play Music library and data. You can also delete your Google Play Music data.

Interesting.

From what I can tell, my transition to YouTube Music had proceeded without any issues. To my knowledge, all of my playlists, songs, albums, likes, and so on had made their way to the new service. But I was curious to see what it would look like to download my purchased and uploaded music, and to back that up to my NAS. As I’ve often written, one of the things that I like(d) about Google Play Music was that you could easily mix and match your own music with music from the subscription library. And I had this rough idea that I’d probably uploaded a few dozen songs at least.

The “download” link above brings you to the Google Takeout website after you sign-in to your account, and as noted it’s a bit dense. But there is one entry for Google Play Music, which notes that the available data includes “a list of the tracks, playlists, radio stations, uploads, and purchases in your Google Play Music library, as well as your playback and search history.” And the more info link adds, “To keep your music, either transfer it to YouTube Music or download it. If you choose not to do either, we’ll let you know before we au...