It’s official: Google Play Music is all but dead. Google killed the Android app and it’s no longer available on the web. We all knew this was coming as Google let us know over a year ago. Presumably, apps on other platforms are likely on their way out.
Of course, Google Play Music is being replaced by YouTube Music, which is arguably much worse. Users who fire up the Google Play Music app will be greeted with a splash screen that reads “Google Play Music is no longer available,” with a “Transfer to YouTube Music” button that’ll take you into the YouTube Music app to get started.
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In classic Google fashion, the death of Play Music doesn’t seem to affect everybody. Some users are still able to access Play Music without issues, while others are now being forced over to YouTube Music.
In a vacuum—if you’ve only ever used Google Play Music—the transition will be fairly painless and easy. The new layout will take some time to get used to but is pretty straightforward. If you’ve used any other music streaming service, the transition to YouTube Music won’t be an easy one.
For one, YouTube seems to add anything that’s even remotely related to music to your YouTube Music library. Yep, those acoustic covers, live concerts, or instrumentals you liked years ago? Those show up in your YouTube Music library.
As pointed out by Android Police, a problem that Google seemingly didn’t think about when killing Play Music is the offline music stored in the app. If you have offline music there’s no obvious way of deleting that off your phone since the app no longer works. The best option is to just uninstall the app, but if you want to keep it around for nostalgia’s sake, you’ll need to tap the app’s icon, go to App Info, and Select Storage. You’ll need to clear the app’s storage.
If, like me, you’re a fan of uploading your personal music library to Google Play Music to merge it with the streaming library, YouTube Music is thankfully still an option. However, if you don’t want to deal with the layout, your options are limited as most music streaming services don’t offer an upload option.
via Android Police