Google Play Music End is nigh: It’s Time to Switch to Youtube

Google’s new migration tool is currently rolling and lets you move your whole library from Play Music to YouTube Music before permanently closing down in December.

Currently, Google has three overlapping audio-related services.
The first and oldest is Google Play Music, which lets you upload 10,000 tracks of your own music, or pay for a subscription to access more than 40 million songs.

And more recently there’s YouTube Music which launched in June 2018.  You can also watch music videos on YouTube Music just the same as you would With YouTube, of course.

The third is the podcasts which is more spoken audio than music.

In 2017, Google announced that Google Play Music would eventually switch over to YouTube.
In May 2020, Google confirmed that Google Play Music will shut down later this year.

They are now encouraging affected users to transfer their music libraries and playlists to YouTube Music with a new one-click transfer via music.youtube.com/transfer.

Your uploads and the rest of your library are moved in the background and you’ll get an email notification when the process is finished.

Youtube is available on many devices similarly to Spotify.  Although some Bluetooth and wifi speakers or radios are likely to include Spotify as an option.   Amazon Alexa and Google home both work seamlessly with them.  Although the later may ramp up it’s promoting the use of youtube music.

We used google music for a while and liked the folders album covers, we hope this and being able to edit track info will be available just as easily.  Additionally, some features are hidden behind long-press menus, which you need to figure out first.

Both services support uploading your own music, but you have to keep selecting ‘uploads’ to see them.

Currently, GPM will play uploaded music via voice on Google Home speakers, but YouTube Music won’t do that. And a casting option has yet to appear, unlike the video side which allows connecting to your smart TV.

There’s no going back to yesterday, the change is happening, and we can’t stop it.