Google 'working hard' to fix YouTube Music criticisms

Google Play Music users being moved over to its replacement, YouTube Music, are finding familiar features are missing or require payment.

Google Play Music is just the latest of Google's very many high-profile services to be abandoned, but the company's plan to migrate users to YouTube Music is reportedly proving problematic. Sufficient users have complained of issues that Google has said it's "working hard" to address them.

According to Ars Technica, a key issue is with Google's equivalent of Apple's iTunes Match. It allowed users to upload their own music collection and have it available to stream for free on their devices. With YouTube Music, that feature requires a paid subscription.

"We understand that uploaded content is an integral part of the listening experience for many of our users across YouTube Music," said a Google spokesperson in a statement to Ars Technica. "While several features for uploaded content aren't currently working in the free YouTube Music experience, we're working hard to address these feature gaps and bring additional functionality to our free tier user."

Google further said "we look forward to sharing more updates soon," but with no more details or a schedule. According to Ars Technica, other issues waiting to be addressed include seemingly basic ones such as sorting music lsits and editing song info.

New users attempting to subscribe to Google Play Music are being redirected to YouTube Music

Google Music Play will close at the end of 2020, and the company has been promoting the migration to YouTube Music since May. YouTube Music has a limited, ad-supported free tier, and a subscription costs $9.99 per month.

While no current figures are available, it was reported in 2019 that in combination, Google Play Music and YouTube Music had a total of 15 million subscribers. At the time, this compared to an estimated 50 million for Apple Music, and 100 million paid Spotify ones.

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5 Comments

CloudTalkin 916 comments · 5 Years

About 4 years ago

Google screwed the pooch in every single way possible with this transition. It's as if they intentionally set out to do the worst job possible and piss off the most people possible. They've had plenty of time to get it right yet they thoroughly wronged it the eff up. Sad, but somewhat predictable. Play Music wasn't as popular as their other services and we all know what Google does to services that aren't an unqualified success.

sergioz 338 comments · 12 Years

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gatorguy 24627 comments · 13 Years

CloudTalkin said:

Google screwed the pooch in every single way possible with this transition. It's as if they intentionally set out to do the worst job possible and piss off the most people possible. They've had plenty of time to get it right yet they thoroughly wronged it the eff up. Sad, but somewhat predictable. Play Music wasn't as popular as their other services and we all know what Google does to services that aren't an unqualified success.

I tend to agree. I've enjoyed paid Google Play Music for a few years now and did not want to be forced into moving my libraries and playlists over to Youtube Music which I also pay for as part of my YouTube subscription. I put it off until the end of July when it was clear it was happening very soon despite what I'd like.

Fortunately it's been a much cleaner and relatively issue-free move from one to the other than I was lead to believe it would be, but some features are still not quite ready and yes Google has had plenty of time to integrate all of it and more.

With that said my wife has decided she prefers music video to just a music stream anyway. If she's happy I usually am too. :/

Beats 3073 comments · 4 Years

"Google 'working hard' to fix YouTube Music"

By rebranding it again.

/s

When Google fails, they just name it something else. Makes me laugh.
A few examples:

Android Marketplace>Google Play

Various messaging platforms>gChat>Google Hangouts>Google Allo>Google Duo

Google Play Music>YouTube Music

G1>Nexus>Pixel