Oct 14, 2020

Youtube Music is replacing Google Play Music

Followers of the streaming service Google Play Music will soon want to hold a moment of silence. After a month of having announced that YouTube Music will replace Google Play Music by December 2020, the changes are occurring. As of September users are no longer be able to purchase and pre-order music or upload and download music from the application.

Nevertheless and much to the users' relief, data like playlists, uploads, purchases, and likes will archived up until December. This gives a window of time to users who wish to transfer their music libraries from Google Play Music to YouTube Music. They can do so through the transfer tool to migrate any purchase to Youtube Music. The Google Takeout application also allows users to export data and download purchased and uploaded music. For Google Play listeners that have not yet started the transfer process, now is the time.

Improvements to Youtube Music

These last months, YouTube Music has been subjected to improvements for all music lovers to enjoy, including changes that are important and familiar to Google Play Music users, including:

New Features and Enhancements:
- Introducing the Explore Tab - A consistent destination to find new releases including albums, singles, and music videos, as well as browse our vast catalog of diverse playlists through the Moods & Genre section.
- Player Page Makeover - The Player Page has been redesigned to a more modern, user-friendly interface. The updates allow better playback controls and easier access to related music and other features like song lyrics.
Introduction of Playlists:
- Assistive Playlist Creation - A feature present in other services, users can now quickly and easily create playlists by adding recommended songs based on existing songs in the playlist, as well as the user’s behavior in the app, such as watch history and likes.
- Collaborative Playlists - Engage in the creation of playlists with the help from other users.
- New Programmed Playlists - Newly launched programmed playlists are open for exploration such as Caribbean Pulse, Conditions Underground, Highline, and more.
More Ways to Enjoy YouTube Music:
- Google Maps - Android integration now allows cross-application usages, allowing listeners to listen to music and get personalized music recommendations within the Google Maps interface.
- Android TV - An update for Android TV brings YouTube Music to the big screen, letting listeners enjoy videos and live performances from their favorite artists.
- Discover music with Google Assistant - Users can now ask their Google Home and smart speakers, “Hey Google, play recommended music from YouTube Music.” Then, Google Assistant will share personalized recommendations based on their favorite artists and genres.

The Potential of this Venture

Google Play Music never had the success of competitors like Apple Music or Spotify. Nevertheless, it had features that none of them had, Google Play Music let people upload up to 50,000 of their own files to the company’s servers and listen to them from the cloud. It had a relatively small group of loyal followers that kept growing through the years.

Now after this transferral, between YouTube Music and Google Play Music, they have now crossed over 20 million subscribers. With this amount of users, and so many features being improved or introduced, Youtube Music has a much more promising future, and the potential to keep growing. We are interested in seeing how this transition affects the positioning of music streaming services.