Google Play Music is about to close, and the transition to YouTube Music is currently very much in demand. For users with uploaded music, the transfer program will seamlessly port your music, but once you enter the YouTube Music interface, you will discover that many features are missing, and things that once worked on the free tier do not. If my inbox is any indication, hordes of people are looking for alternatives.
However, Google does not turn a deaf ear to the concerns of the migrants of Google Music. In response to articles we have written here, such as “YouTube Music holds my speakers for ransom”, Google contacted us and sent a statement about:
We understand that uploading content is an integral part of the listening experience for many of our YouTube Music users. While some uploaded content features do not currently work in the free YouTube Music experience, we work hard to address these feature holes and provide additional functionality for our free tier user. We look forward to sharing more updates soon.
While this is a bit vague, the shoutout for users of offered content is a change of tone from what the company said in June. Our article on YouTube Music was primarily about the changes with free-to-premium functionality in YouTube Music and Google Music, including the requirement for a monthly fee to play purchased and uploaded music on Google Home speakers. Before we published that article, we double-checked with Google to ask if loading to use a Google Home of YouTube music was really what it was planning, and all the company would do is reaffirm the current restrictions.
We were also able to have a brief chat with YouTube Music Product Manager Brandon Bilinski, and the most important message we received was that the YouTube Music transition is more about combining branding and infrastructure than it is about a shift in strategy or taking on a more hardline stance on paid subscriptions. The main confirmed changes, announced last week, are the shutdown of the desktop-uploaded “Music Manager” desktop OS program and Google’s shutdown of the a la carte-selling business. You can still upload music via drag and drop on the website, and YouTube Music will honor your purchases of Google Music song.
For the record, we recorded all the important lyrics on YouTube Music we could think of, such as the requirement to pay the monthly streaming license to cast audio to speakers, download music for offline playback, sort music lists, edit song info , Android Auto Support, and the early mix of YouTube and Music Content. While Google does not want to publicly outline a timeline or promise to include specific features, it is at least aware of the current feature holes and what people are complaining about.
I think a big part of the problem is that Google has been very transparent about only the negative part of its roadmap. It announced Google Music shutdown plans, in detail, four months in advance. This is a good thing to do, but it would also help the company to counter all that negative information and go into specifications about the positive parts of its YouTube Music route map. Of course, talking only about the negative makes everyone a negative impression, and, in particular, seeing how some Google shutdowns have gone in the past, has sent people looking for alternatives.
The company obviously hopes that this statement will calm the fears of the migrants of Google Music, but the clock is ticking! Streaming of Google Music shuts down in October for most of the world, so the company has only two months to express some of the key features if it wants to continue the music for its old Google Music customers. Some of the YouTube Music Team’s feature parity works are already visible, with support for voice commands for uploaded YouTube Music playlists that have just been tested for last week. The company has also been building the migration program for months – which works very well – and I think with this statement it becomes clear that Google did not want to do all that work to cause a mass exodus of the service later.
