22 ms·

Google cancels legacy Google Play Music subscriptions

287 points by rdslw 6y ago

franciscop 6y ago
I remember my friend complaining that the same happened with the GameMaker community few years back; there was a lifetime with all future major and minor version updates included, but then boom no longer applicable after few months: Src: https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/why-do-i-have-to-pay-to-upgrade-my-license.24162/#post-152842 https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/why-do-i-have-...
everdrive 6y ago
Again, never subscribe to a service assuming the terms won't change or be removed. Never assume that you 'own' anything that lives in, or relies on a company's cloud. This doesn't mean that services are bad, but they should be seen as ephemeral.
rdslw 6y ago
To make it clear: If you were google play music subscriber, which in 2014 offered plan with lifetime guarantee of price: You've been silently cancelled by Google :) Upon contacting support, the only remedy they offer as for now is to subscribe to You Tube music (higher price and no lifetime guarantee) and are 'investigating' while of course they hadnt provided any solution. Additional info: * you did not get ANY information about this cancellation, up to the moment people starting flooging their support which was yesterday :) * at that moment, you probably got two cancellation mails without any usefull info * this is Google problem/action (not known atm), not your bank or CC Additional info v2: * Google did NOT try to do monhtly charges for the service on the usual date, bank/CC confirms NOT a single charge attempt until, YTM resubsbription on support request. * The problem affects probably (?) subscribers with renewal dates between April 1st and 12th (incl.) as on 13th Google noticed problems and stopped "auto-cancel-feature". Additional info v3: * Looks like that only some subscribers (Europeans for sure) were affected by it, so smaller impact, maybe related to country of subscriber (unknown atm) * It was probably part of the glitched (?) and multi-steps transition of google music to youtube music services (speculation atm)
- gullyfur 6y ago
  That's disturbing for consumers, and of course Google will attempt to force you to arbitrate for remuneration. Perhaps the Google Music consumers can perform the overwhelming "mass arbitration" denial-of-service against Google that was on the front-page a few days ago?
  - jkaplowitz 6y ago
    Unlike most companies featured on HN, including several which compete heavily with Google, the end-user Google consumer and G Suite and GCP terms have never included an arbitration clause. They did have one in their US employment agreement for a while but were successfully pressured to drop it. That said, if they already stopped cancelling customers yesterday (my $7.99/mo is still active) as another commenter said, it sounds like a glitch that they'll aim to fix, so a class action would be premature. Some customers have even reported ad-hoc fixes. They've always been bad about communicating externally in a usefully sensitive way, even when they really need to. This is unfortunately no exception. (Disclosure: I used to work for Google until about 5 years ago, but I have no inside info on this incident and certainly am not speaking for them now.)
    - hexmiles 6y ago
      a bit of topic, but what is arbitration and why is it bad? We don't have it here in Europe (or at least is not very diffused). Can someone eli5 for me? Thanks
      - gowld 6y ago
        It's essentially a private court, where the parties ask a third party to quickly and cheaply settle a disagreement. When used responsibly, it's great. It's bad when a corporation requires arbitration (at the arbiter they choose -- which is a conflict of interest) and bans using the public government court system, as part of the terms of service of the product.
      - pgeorgi 6y ago
Semaphor 6y ago
The title does not seem to fit what’s behind the link? I see people complaining about google canceling ongoing subscriptions after failing to collect the payments, presumably because of some fuckup on Google’s payment processing end.
tomrod 6y ago
SaaS and lifetime subscriptions don't play well together.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Of course, lifetime upgrades of licensed software didn't really either. They didn't go away immediately with a canceled service, but in most cases they still end up breaking with OS upgrades, new devices, etc.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
    The difference being, upgrading the OS was your decision. You still had a license for something that worked on a dated version of the OS, if you so chose. This is out of your control.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Kinda sorta. Security patches. There's other software you want to upgrade that's only supported on newer OSs. Your hardware breaks and the replacement hardware needs a newer OS. Yes, it's possible (and organizations with specialized needs do) keep running 15 year old software and hardware without changing anything. But, for ordinary people, that app you bought is going to break at some point in the absence of updates. Of course, it's a bigger problem with SaaS and you have less control over it but licensed software is not immune.
  - Psyladine 6y ago
    >lifetime upgrades of licensed software "we initially made a higher priced plan to get more from our customers for the same, since we'd have supported all our customers anyway since broken or dated software would have put us out of business. But now that we're commercially stable, it's time to moralize about how unfair a burden our voluntarily offerings on the market are to ourselves!"
- gowld 6y ago
  "aaS" is just a funny techie term for "subscriptions". Subscriptions and lifetime subscriptions don't play well together.
dschuetz 6y ago
It's ironic how short a "lifetime" can be on the Internet.
- lihaciudaniel 6y ago
  Perhaps google silently saying "we are all going to die"
  - blotter_paper 6y ago
    Sorry for the confusion, our COVID tracking analytics predicted an end to your lifetime subscription this month.
- Upvoter33 6y ago
  it was a lifetime subscription. it just wasn't your lifetime.
  - tommysavaria 6y ago
    It seems to be that they are looking to phase out Play Music in favor of Youtube Music. If that is the case, then those « lifetime » subscriptions meant that if was good for the lifetime of the service, and that is coming to an end soon. If they shutdown Play Music, it might look similar to the end of Google Reader in 2013. They might be looking to get people off the service until they announce it.
    - jermeh 6y ago
      That's not an "if" situation. They've been very public about migrating to the Youtube Music platform for a couple years now.
      - toyg 6y ago
        Why are these companies obsessed with unifying their brands and capabilities? You can buy dozens of different shampoo brands (because you like the bottle of this or the smell of that) and in the end your money will end up flowing to the same company; but $deity forbid that I could get two same-but-different services from the same company if they can avoid it. I mean, I get the operational savings etc etc, but if they are both profitable, why go through the pain and suffering of killing one? Then you turn to another niche (like IM) and it's the opposite attitude. Google's commercial strategies are pretty nonsensical.
bestnameever 6y ago
My subscription is still active and is due to renew today. I will let everyone know what happens. fyi nobody is complaining about this on the youtubemusic reddit which is the one of the first places I think we would hear about it if this issue was widespread BUT maybe its regional and hasn't hit the usa users yet.
- bobo_legos 6y ago
  Mine renews on the 14th and the payment was already made last night. Everything I look at shows my sub. is still active. I'm one of the original 7.99 subscribers. The death of Google Music is long awaited and feared. Once it does die it'll be like the death of Google Reader 2.0. People are just getting twitchy with any little mistake Google makes.
  - bestnameever 6y ago
    Day 1 subscriber here as well. One thing that is interesting is that both youtube and youtube music show a price of $9.99 but once I click the manage button it displays the $7.99 price through google play music. Honestly, I'll be pretty bummed if they increase the prices. I stopped using youtube music / google play music awhile back as they ruined the experience for me there but have kept it for the ad free youtube.
- wolrah 6y ago
  Likewise, my grandfathered sub is due to renew today (looking at history the receipt email tends to show up in the 13:00-14:00 range in US-Eastern) and it's still showing as active at this time.
  - wolrah 6y ago
    Followup: Right on time at 14:00 Eastern I got my usual receipt email, still paying $7.99/mo as always.
- josefx 6y ago
  > youtubemusic reddit There is also a googleplaymusic reddit which seems to be a more obvious place for google play music users.
toyg 6y ago
Dark pattern to "erode" an unprofitable category of users...? "Oops, we had a technical problem and now your lifetime option is gone. Unfortunately we have no way to create new lifetime subscriptions, because of technical changes. As a goodwill gesture, here's a free year on $some_other_yearly_service. Whatchagonnado, sue us for a few pennies? lolmao" Repeat a few times until everyone gets the memo or resource usage from that category goes under "acceptable" levels of waste.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  > Whatchagonnado, sue us for a few pennies? lolmao Are courts ever gonna learn how to deal with these huge corporations? They probably think it's cheaper to pay the fines than to obey the law and do the right thing.
  - gruez 6y ago
    This sounds like the perfect kind of thing for class actions. Another commenter mentioned that there's no arbitration clause so that shouldn't be an impediment.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      Even with arbitration, the new pattern is to write a bot to mass file arbitration cases. DoorDash was arguing that the thousands of arbitration cases filed against them in one day should've been converted into a class action lawsuit. They ended up paying millions in arbitration fees alone.
  - quest88 6y ago
    What does the law say about this?
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has... Another Google "oops"
zelphirkalt 6y ago
Google is just following the law: Like in law, where a life-long sentence does not necessarily mean life-long, at Google lifetime guarantee does not mean lifetime. Perhaps guarantee, but not lifetime. (Don't take this too seriously, especially not from me.)
mangoman 6y ago
I subscribed in 2016 when they were doing a special - $7.99/mo lifetime including youtube premium. My subscription does not seem to be affected yet, although my renewal date is April 22nd, so I guess we'll see what happens on that day. Honestly I've been thinking about moving to spotify, but the youtube ad-free premium has kept me on google play music because it's just not worth it to switch. But Google Play Music has not been updated in what feels like ages. And the iOS client is terrible (I only switched in the last 6 months). Seems like they're getting ready to pull the plug. I subscribed in Oct 2016, and over that time I've saved $2/mo on equivalent music subscriptions and had youtube premium included (yeah yeah I know adblock or pihole or nextdns negates the value, but it's nice to be able to use the youtube client on my phone without needing to set up those solutions). Net value has been $83 though I've paid for it with a drastically sub par music experience (sharing is pointless, can't see what my friends listen to, playlist management is terrible).
- jpdb 6y ago
  > youtube ad-free premium has kept me on google play music I've been a subscriber since 2016 as well and this is as well as music uploads is what has kept me on Google Play music. YouTube music has this functionality now, but it still lacks a proper library feature as well as a migration option for existing library's and uploads. Spotify just does everything so much better, so I'm so close to moving.
- MivLives 6y ago
  I made the same move, from Google Play Music to Spotify. Spotify's recommendations are miles better (I was discovering new music day one) , I can share songs/playlists with my friends, and things like... actually having a desktop client instead of one made by a third party are nice. There's even smaller stuff like artists I like uploading playlists of music they like. I do miss a lot of the uploading features GPM had, and they seem to have slightly more things then Spotify. No ad free Youtube on chromecast kinda sucks too.
option_greek 6y ago
Google's payment options page is one of the worst designs I have ever seen. A simple task like removing and adding an expired CC will make you wish you were never born. Their support basically is a loop of templated responses with Zero attempt at solving any issues (My guess is all google support agents are just bots).
ecmascript 6y ago
If you use adblocker, music.youtube.com is free and without any ads. At least for me.
- userbinator 6y ago
  Especially for music, piracy has always been the easier route.
oftenwrong 6y ago
Google Music is probably just following the typical path of a Google service: 1. Create something new in a given category and hype it up. 2. If it fails to catch on massively, neglect it. Make only minor changes, while competitors are continuously improving their offerings. 3. Leave that old service to rot until you decide to shut it down. Meanwhile, start over from step 1 with different branding. I can't say this is a poor strategy for a company like Google.
- mattkevan 6y ago
  Seems like all the people in charge at Microsoft in the 2000s have moved over to Google, as the product strategy seems the same – create something, watch it fail, kill it, hastily rebrand the old thing as a new thing and repeat. E.g. MSN Music/Zune Marketplace/XBox Music/Microsoft Store/Groove Music
robkop 6y ago
Does anyone have an easy way of exporting playlists/ liked songs out of google play music into some generic format (is there even a generic format for this kind of data)? Currently getting really tired of google play music but I really dislike what Spotify is doing with postcasts so it feels like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place on android.
- modsWork4appl 6y ago
  Current plan is to write a Python script that takes screenshots every 1 second, and I'll tab through my huge playlist. Then later I'll scrape those photos for text.
  - mceachen 6y ago
    If you open your network tab in your browser's devtools, there may be JSON payloads to give you what you need (rather than farting around with OCR or reverse image searching your album art).
    - modsWork4appl 6y ago
      No luck. But I did make that python program to take photos. 64 images to scrape one day. I'm not too concerned of the difficulty of OCR, there's gotta be some libraries for it, especially on black and white text from a web page. (I did OCR with cellphone pictures and it worked)
zmk_ 6y ago
Reminds me how Google "upgraded" me to a better price when I moved from the Netherlands to Sweden. When I complained to them I got 3 months "free trial".
inerg 6y ago
I was affected by this as my plan was set to renew on the fourth. I was able to contact support and get my plan going again on the discounted rate. They ended up having to cancel my subscription and probably set some sort of flag for me to get the discounted pricing. All in all while it was a bit of a pain I don't think any malice was meant in this. I'm betting they had just set the end of the renewals on the subscription to April 2020 and figured if the service is still going they would update the end date.
jamisteven 6y ago
Does this mean we can get Songza back? Was pretty bummed out when google acquired them, really enjoyed that music app although Spotify basically has the same functionality now.
zapttt 6y ago
people here will not realize this is not about the pennies saved by those early adopters, but the real damage was done years ago, when the now-proven-false advertisement of a stable price for life likely killed the competition and now allow them and apple to charge whatever they want today.
modsWork4appl 6y ago
Are they going to carry over my playlists? I don't mind a price change, the government printed a lot of money. But I have hundreds of songs in a playlist.
jhoechtl 6y ago
I will ditch Google Music for Youtube Music the moment they allow me to upload my MP3-collection. Any ETA on that or even plans to implement that? If not, is there any other free service where I could upload my MP3 collection to, with an app for mobile which would sync the data between mobile devices? On Youtube Google nags me since months (a year?) to switch to Youtube Music but I get less service there. I fear the moment I hastily tap to try and loose Google Music.
- paulcole 6y ago
  > the moment they allow me to upload my MP3-collection I would not hold your breath for this. The holdover MP3 collector is such a small minority that no mainstream company is going to consider them from here on out. > is there any other free service where I could upload my MP3 collection to If there was, why would you waste your time? Either it's not going to be free or it's going to disappear.
  - thanatos_dem 6y ago
    That was my Google Play Music use case as well. About a year ago I set up a plex server on my NAS and bulk downloaded my GPM library onto it (which to google’s credit was easy to do). Now I have them on my own hardware, and accessible on the go with the Plex app. It’s a better experience for video than audio, but it’s totally serviceable. There had been murmurs for a long time of Google Play Music going away, so I moved off ASAP. Looks like that was a good call.
    - apocalyptic0n3 6y ago
      That was my move as well. I already had a decently sized NAS with Plex that was accessible anywhere. The music experience through GPM and Spotify is better, but at least I can manage the music myself and I never have to worry about it going away (or some weird licensing or exclusivity issue not allowing me to listen to something I want to listen to). And my bootlegs, b-sides, remixes, and rare tracks that you can't get on streaming services is preserved too.
  - 6y ago
crazygringo 6y ago
A bunch of people here are commenting about how Google is silently cancelling a lifetime price guarantee. But there's nothing in the thread about any lifetime guarantee, and Googling I can't find any reference either. Does anyone have actual evidence that Google explicitly made a lifetime price guarantee? It just seems... unusual, not something subscription services generally do. Also, this seems like more of a bug affecting some users, as opposed to intended policy. I mean, when Google cancels things, it usually provides months/years of advance notice with lots of e-mails. So I'm hesitant to jump in with my pitchfork here...
- nyczomg 6y ago
  I don't know what is true and what isn't, but it is funny that you used Google to research whether Google did something wrong. In this case, they might not be the best search engine to use....
- josteink 6y ago
  > A bunch of people here are commenting about how Google is silently cancelling a lifetime price guarantee. Early adopters were promised a fixed, permanently rebated price for signing up. I remember. I was one who took the offer (but later cancelled for other reasons).
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    Do you have the original e-mail or anything you could paste here? I'm actually really curious to see the exact wording and fine print/TOS. Just because that's such a rare thing to do, above all by a large company, and I'm surprised it would have passed legal review, but the devil is often in the details.
    - josteink 6y ago
      I went looking, but I can’t find it now. Sorry.
      - 6y ago
Gravityloss 6y ago
Hmm. So I bought an album and a few songs there. They're apparently gone and I get some flow asking for credit card details. Apparently trying to sign me in for google music? Well, I had moved on to Spotify anyway.
- Gravityloss 6y ago
  Seems also the few movies I bought are gone. But they still sell them? That's certainly an interesting way of doing business. This is one of the movies I had bought. I could again "buy" it. Wonder who will fall for that for the second time... https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Kong_Skull_Island?id=qUD8xPGIbDQ https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Kong_Skull_Isla...
  - Gravityloss 6y ago
    Ok, all the movies are back there now! Might have been user error on them some temporary issue. The music is also there but it just switches your user so you have to re-login with the correct user after going to the music menu...
abraham 6y ago
> Google responded to our inquiry to confirm that they are aware of the issue and working on fixing it. https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-music-subscriptions-are-failing-to-auto-renew-for-some/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-music-s...
- Lammy 6y ago
  Is it weird that the same site published this on the same day? https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-music-to-youtube-music-making-the-switch/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-music-t... Very strangely authoritarian wording, too: "It comes down to preference, but soon, you'll have no other choice but switching" "Unfortunately, the equation isn't that simple here because YouTube Music will replace Google Play Music one day. You have to accept YouTube Music's quirks if you currently use and love Play Music, or you have to switch to another platform altogether."
ashtonkem 6y ago
I know it's a bad trope at this point, but you really have to assume that Google will change anything on you. They're just not a consistent or good faith company to operate with, even compared to other companies in this space.
catacombs 6y ago
Never buy anything from Google.
- modsWork4appl 6y ago
  I've added Google to my Don't buy list. It's - Apple, Samsung, Google
maxdo 6y ago
This is the last drop. They ditched the google music in favor of half baked youtube music, with no playlist import, horrible offline support, tons of bugs that still there. I heard they are big somewhere in India. Well... good luck. I'm done and switching to Spotify. The only reason I was attracted by this terrible service was pricing. I subscribe from my country of origin at ~2 USD/mo subscription. For that price, I was ok with their quality.
outside1234 6y ago
Sort of like the lifetime guarantee that GCP claims to offer (until next year when it's shut down). It's sort of nuts to think anything Google does is going to be around in 5 years.
dbg31415 6y ago
Customer support, especially from Google, has been abysmal during Covid. I called a co-worker, and the number looked like a normal US number... Nope, it was a Canadian number, and AT&T charged me like $60 for a 30 minute call. Fuck that, it's the same country code. So I made the switch to Google Fi. I called Google Fi in advance, and asked how it would work with my Google Voice number. The support person said, "Yeah, you can't have the two kinds of Google numbers on the same email, but just make a new Google account and set you Google Fi number up under there, then forward your Google Voice number like you've been doing." Cool, easy. I do that. Mind you my whole family is on the plan, Mom, Dad, sister... and it's a big deal to switch. After the SIM cards were sent, I go to set my Google Voice number to forward. And it doesn't work. It tells me I can't forward a Google Voice number to a Google Fi phone. WTF. Then Covid hits. All of my work and emergency contact numnbers are routed through my Google Voice number, which I can inexplicably no longer forward to my phone. Google support lines are just playing recordings, "Not available." Live chat... oof, 40 minutes to have what should have been a 2 minute conversation. And it's either a bot, or someone just copying a script. It was horrible. And I had to try like 4 times. Hours wasted. Email support was worse. Nobody pays attention to context. Like they just go until they see a keyword they recognize and paste in a response template. I've got Google Voice to forward to my emails... so all my calls and texts were still sort of coming in. But I wanted to get it sorted with Google. I spell out a plan, email and ask them if it'll work. They say over email it will. I'm going to just drop my cell phone number and just use my Google Voice number on my cell. Easier than trying to update every place that had the old number. Oof. Then I'll switch the ownership from my Fake Google account to my Real Google account and turn off the Fake Google account line. Plan was signed off on by Google staff. Cool, I feel like it'll work. I get the new sim card, and it sort of works... except the fake Google account I used to set up the plan in the first place has to stay the owner. I can't change my real Google account to the owner on the family plan, I can't change anyone to the owner on the family plan. So I'm stuck paying for an extra line. Google's solution... "Just drop the family plan." No joke. Just kick everyone off onto their own plan, problem solved. I got 3 email templates telling me to do this -- that's how they want me to change the owner of the family plan. Oof. None of this will will kill me, and I'm glad they are keeping their employees safe... but none of this experience will ever put me in a spot to use Google again if I can avoid it. Their support is worse than any I've ever experienced. Response times suck, lack of training for their staff, lack of intelligence around how to solve problems... it just feels like I'm talking to bots whose first language wasn't English. Anyway totally frustrating experience, and it makes no sense. Why can't I forward a Google Voice number to a Google Fi phone? Shit like that is beyond me. And even with limiting product design, why wasn't Google Staff trained on that so they could give me proper advice when I first called? I was a huge Google Fiber fan, and I wanted to like Google Fi... but man... it's been such a hassle. I've got a 100+ response email thread now and it's all just missing the context copy / paste talk, or them ignoring the question and answering something else, or contradicting advice one person to the next. Oof.
OrangeMango 6y ago
I personally never trust anything that says lifetime guarantee. It just can't happen except in very unusual circumstances. I do have an anecdote that disproves my theory, however. My grandmother used to be an AT&T telephone operator, before they were broken up. As a retiree, she has "free lifetime AT&T", which they have been honoring even as the new company is not the company she retired from. She literally dials 0 and asks the person to connect her call for her. It costs her nothing.
- bainsfather 6y ago
  My father bought a lifetime subscription to the uk magazine 'Private Eye' in, iirc, the 1970s, for £10 (they were being sued and on the verge of going bust). He still gets his copy delivered every fortnight.
bobblywobbles 6y ago
For as much as we rely on their services and look to Google for advice on best practices and guidelines, time and time again services are simply dropped. On one hand, yes as a company I imagine you sneak some sneaky verbiage in the ToS so that you can't back yourself into a corner you can't get out of, but offering a lifetime subscription and it just being canceled - I just can't trust Google anymore to keep services up they "promise" will be there.
puppyprogram 6y ago
I was not on legacy but canceled my family plan anyway in solidarity. I guess back to piracy for me

287 points by rdslw 6y ago

I remember my friend complaining that the same happened with the GameMaker community few years back; there was a lifetime with all future major and minor version updates included, but then boom no longer applicable after few months: Src: https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/why-do-i-have-to-pay-to-upgrade-my-license.24162/#post-152842 https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/why-do-i-have-...

everdrive 6y ago

Again, never subscribe to a service assuming the terms won't change or be removed. Never assume that you 'own' anything that lives in, or relies on a company's cloud. This doesn't mean that services are bad, but they should be seen as ephemeral.

rdslw 6y ago

To make it clear: If you were google play music subscriber, which in 2014 offered plan with lifetime guarantee of price: You've been silently cancelled by Google :) Upon contacting support, the only remedy they offer as for now is to subscribe to You Tube music (higher price and no lifetime guarantee) and are 'investigating' while of course they hadnt provided any solution. Additional info: * you did not get ANY information about this cancellation, up to the moment people starting flooging their support which was yesterday :) * at that moment, you probably got two cancellation mails without any usefull info * this is Google problem/action (not known atm), not your bank or CC Additional info v2: * Google did NOT try to do monhtly charges for the service on the usual date, bank/CC confirms NOT a single charge attempt until, YTM resubsbription on support request. * The problem affects probably (?) subscribers with renewal dates between April 1st and 12th (incl.) as on 13th Google noticed problems and stopped "auto-cancel-feature". Additional info v3: * Looks like that only some subscribers (Europeans for sure) were affected by it, so smaller impact, maybe related to country of subscriber (unknown atm) * It was probably part of the glitched (?) and multi-steps transition of google music to youtube music services (speculation atm)

gullyfur 6y ago
That's disturbing for consumers, and of course Google will attempt to force you to arbitrate for remuneration. Perhaps the Google Music consumers can perform the overwhelming "mass arbitration" denial-of-service against Google that was on the front-page a few days ago?
- jkaplowitz 6y ago
  Unlike most companies featured on HN, including several which compete heavily with Google, the end-user Google consumer and G Suite and GCP terms have never included an arbitration clause. They did have one in their US employment agreement for a while but were successfully pressured to drop it. That said, if they already stopped cancelling customers yesterday (my $7.99/mo is still active) as another commenter said, it sounds like a glitch that they'll aim to fix, so a class action would be premature. Some customers have even reported ad-hoc fixes. They've always been bad about communicating externally in a usefully sensitive way, even when they really need to. This is unfortunately no exception. (Disclosure: I used to work for Google until about 5 years ago, but I have no inside info on this incident and certainly am not speaking for them now.)
  - hexmiles 6y ago
    a bit of topic, but what is arbitration and why is it bad? We don't have it here in Europe (or at least is not very diffused). Can someone eli5 for me? Thanks
    - gowld 6y ago
      It's essentially a private court, where the parties ask a third party to quickly and cheaply settle a disagreement. When used responsibly, it's great. It's bad when a corporation requires arbitration (at the arbiter they choose -- which is a conflict of interest) and bans using the public government court system, as part of the terms of service of the product.
    - pgeorgi 6y ago

Semaphor 6y ago

The title does not seem to fit what’s behind the link? I see people complaining about google canceling ongoing subscriptions after failing to collect the payments, presumably because of some fuckup on Google’s payment processing end.

tomrod 6y ago

SaaS and lifetime subscriptions don't play well together.

ghaff 6y ago
Of course, lifetime upgrades of licensed software didn't really either. They didn't go away immediately with a canceled service, but in most cases they still end up breaking with OS upgrades, new devices, etc.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  The difference being, upgrading the OS was your decision. You still had a license for something that worked on a dated version of the OS, if you so chose. This is out of your control.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Kinda sorta. Security patches. There's other software you want to upgrade that's only supported on newer OSs. Your hardware breaks and the replacement hardware needs a newer OS. Yes, it's possible (and organizations with specialized needs do) keep running 15 year old software and hardware without changing anything. But, for ordinary people, that app you bought is going to break at some point in the absence of updates. Of course, it's a bigger problem with SaaS and you have less control over it but licensed software is not immune.
- Psyladine 6y ago
  >lifetime upgrades of licensed software "we initially made a higher priced plan to get more from our customers for the same, since we'd have supported all our customers anyway since broken or dated software would have put us out of business. But now that we're commercially stable, it's time to moralize about how unfair a burden our voluntarily offerings on the market are to ourselves!"
gowld 6y ago
"aaS" is just a funny techie term for "subscriptions". Subscriptions and lifetime subscriptions don't play well together.

dschuetz 6y ago

It's ironic how short a "lifetime" can be on the Internet.

lihaciudaniel 6y ago
Perhaps google silently saying "we are all going to die"
- blotter_paper 6y ago
  Sorry for the confusion, our COVID tracking analytics predicted an end to your lifetime subscription this month.
Upvoter33 6y ago
it was a lifetime subscription. it just wasn't your lifetime.
- tommysavaria 6y ago
  It seems to be that they are looking to phase out Play Music in favor of Youtube Music. If that is the case, then those « lifetime » subscriptions meant that if was good for the lifetime of the service, and that is coming to an end soon. If they shutdown Play Music, it might look similar to the end of Google Reader in 2013. They might be looking to get people off the service until they announce it.
  - jermeh 6y ago
    That's not an "if" situation. They've been very public about migrating to the Youtube Music platform for a couple years now.
    - toyg 6y ago
      Why are these companies obsessed with unifying their brands and capabilities? You can buy dozens of different shampoo brands (because you like the bottle of this or the smell of that) and in the end your money will end up flowing to the same company; but $deity forbid that I could get two same-but-different services from the same company if they can avoid it. I mean, I get the operational savings etc etc, but if they are both profitable, why go through the pain and suffering of killing one? Then you turn to another niche (like IM) and it's the opposite attitude. Google's commercial strategies are pretty nonsensical.

bestnameever 6y ago

My subscription is still active and is due to renew today. I will let everyone know what happens. fyi nobody is complaining about this on the youtubemusic reddit which is the one of the first places I think we would hear about it if this issue was widespread BUT maybe its regional and hasn't hit the usa users yet.

bobo_legos 6y ago
Mine renews on the 14th and the payment was already made last night. Everything I look at shows my sub. is still active. I'm one of the original 7.99 subscribers. The death of Google Music is long awaited and feared. Once it does die it'll be like the death of Google Reader 2.0. People are just getting twitchy with any little mistake Google makes.
- bestnameever 6y ago
  Day 1 subscriber here as well. One thing that is interesting is that both youtube and youtube music show a price of $9.99 but once I click the manage button it displays the $7.99 price through google play music. Honestly, I'll be pretty bummed if they increase the prices. I stopped using youtube music / google play music awhile back as they ruined the experience for me there but have kept it for the ad free youtube.
wolrah 6y ago
Likewise, my grandfathered sub is due to renew today (looking at history the receipt email tends to show up in the 13:00-14:00 range in US-Eastern) and it's still showing as active at this time.
- wolrah 6y ago
  Followup: Right on time at 14:00 Eastern I got my usual receipt email, still paying $7.99/mo as always.
josefx 6y ago
> youtubemusic reddit There is also a googleplaymusic reddit which seems to be a more obvious place for google play music users.

toyg 6y ago

Dark pattern to "erode" an unprofitable category of users...? "Oops, we had a technical problem and now your lifetime option is gone. Unfortunately we have no way to create new lifetime subscriptions, because of technical changes. As a goodwill gesture, here's a free year on $some_other_yearly_service. Whatchagonnado, sue us for a few pennies? lolmao" Repeat a few times until everyone gets the memo or resource usage from that category goes under "acceptable" levels of waste.

matheusmoreira 6y ago
> Whatchagonnado, sue us for a few pennies? lolmao Are courts ever gonna learn how to deal with these huge corporations? They probably think it's cheaper to pay the fines than to obey the law and do the right thing.
- gruez 6y ago
  This sounds like the perfect kind of thing for class actions. Another commenter mentioned that there's no arbitration clause so that shouldn't be an impediment.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Even with arbitration, the new pattern is to write a bot to mass file arbitration cases. DoorDash was arguing that the thousands of arbitration cases filed against them in one day should've been converted into a class action lawsuit. They ended up paying millions in arbitration fees alone.
- quest88 6y ago
  What does the law say about this?
throwaway2048 6y ago
https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has... Another Google "oops"

zelphirkalt 6y ago

Google is just following the law: Like in law, where a life-long sentence does not necessarily mean life-long, at Google lifetime guarantee does not mean lifetime. Perhaps guarantee, but not lifetime. (Don't take this too seriously, especially not from me.)

mangoman 6y ago

I subscribed in 2016 when they were doing a special - $7.99/mo lifetime including youtube premium. My subscription does not seem to be affected yet, although my renewal date is April 22nd, so I guess we'll see what happens on that day. Honestly I've been thinking about moving to spotify, but the youtube ad-free premium has kept me on google play music because it's just not worth it to switch. But Google Play Music has not been updated in what feels like ages. And the iOS client is terrible (I only switched in the last 6 months). Seems like they're getting ready to pull the plug. I subscribed in Oct 2016, and over that time I've saved $2/mo on equivalent music subscriptions and had youtube premium included (yeah yeah I know adblock or pihole or nextdns negates the value, but it's nice to be able to use the youtube client on my phone without needing to set up those solutions). Net value has been $83 though I've paid for it with a drastically sub par music experience (sharing is pointless, can't see what my friends listen to, playlist management is terrible).

jpdb 6y ago
> youtube ad-free premium has kept me on google play music I've been a subscriber since 2016 as well and this is as well as music uploads is what has kept me on Google Play music. YouTube music has this functionality now, but it still lacks a proper library feature as well as a migration option for existing library's and uploads. Spotify just does everything so much better, so I'm so close to moving.
MivLives 6y ago
I made the same move, from Google Play Music to Spotify. Spotify's recommendations are miles better (I was discovering new music day one) , I can share songs/playlists with my friends, and things like... actually having a desktop client instead of one made by a third party are nice. There's even smaller stuff like artists I like uploading playlists of music they like. I do miss a lot of the uploading features GPM had, and they seem to have slightly more things then Spotify. No ad free Youtube on chromecast kinda sucks too.

option_greek 6y ago

Google's payment options page is one of the worst designs I have ever seen. A simple task like removing and adding an expired CC will make you wish you were never born. Their support basically is a loop of templated responses with Zero attempt at solving any issues (My guess is all google support agents are just bots).

ecmascript 6y ago

If you use adblocker, music.youtube.com is free and without any ads. At least for me.

userbinator 6y ago
Especially for music, piracy has always been the easier route.

oftenwrong 6y ago

Google Music is probably just following the typical path of a Google service: 1. Create something new in a given category and hype it up. 2. If it fails to catch on massively, neglect it. Make only minor changes, while competitors are continuously improving their offerings. 3. Leave that old service to rot until you decide to shut it down. Meanwhile, start over from step 1 with different branding. I can't say this is a poor strategy for a company like Google.

mattkevan 6y ago
Seems like all the people in charge at Microsoft in the 2000s have moved over to Google, as the product strategy seems the same – create something, watch it fail, kill it, hastily rebrand the old thing as a new thing and repeat. E.g. MSN Music/Zune Marketplace/XBox Music/Microsoft Store/Groove Music

robkop 6y ago

Does anyone have an easy way of exporting playlists/ liked songs out of google play music into some generic format (is there even a generic format for this kind of data)? Currently getting really tired of google play music but I really dislike what Spotify is doing with postcasts so it feels like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place on android.

modsWork4appl 6y ago
Current plan is to write a Python script that takes screenshots every 1 second, and I'll tab through my huge playlist. Then later I'll scrape those photos for text.
- mceachen 6y ago
  If you open your network tab in your browser's devtools, there may be JSON payloads to give you what you need (rather than farting around with OCR or reverse image searching your album art).
  - modsWork4appl 6y ago
    No luck. But I did make that python program to take photos. 64 images to scrape one day. I'm not too concerned of the difficulty of OCR, there's gotta be some libraries for it, especially on black and white text from a web page. (I did OCR with cellphone pictures and it worked)

zmk_ 6y ago

Reminds me how Google "upgraded" me to a better price when I moved from the Netherlands to Sweden. When I complained to them I got 3 months "free trial".

inerg 6y ago

I was affected by this as my plan was set to renew on the fourth. I was able to contact support and get my plan going again on the discounted rate. They ended up having to cancel my subscription and probably set some sort of flag for me to get the discounted pricing. All in all while it was a bit of a pain I don't think any malice was meant in this. I'm betting they had just set the end of the renewals on the subscription to April 2020 and figured if the service is still going they would update the end date.

jamisteven 6y ago

Does this mean we can get Songza back? Was pretty bummed out when google acquired them, really enjoyed that music app although Spotify basically has the same functionality now.

zapttt 6y ago

people here will not realize this is not about the pennies saved by those early adopters, but the real damage was done years ago, when the now-proven-false advertisement of a stable price for life likely killed the competition and now allow them and apple to charge whatever they want today.

modsWork4appl 6y ago

Are they going to carry over my playlists? I don't mind a price change, the government printed a lot of money. But I have hundreds of songs in a playlist.

jhoechtl 6y ago

I will ditch Google Music for Youtube Music the moment they allow me to upload my MP3-collection. Any ETA on that or even plans to implement that? If not, is there any other free service where I could upload my MP3 collection to, with an app for mobile which would sync the data between mobile devices? On Youtube Google nags me since months (a year?) to switch to Youtube Music but I get less service there. I fear the moment I hastily tap to try and loose Google Music.

paulcole 6y ago
> the moment they allow me to upload my MP3-collection I would not hold your breath for this. The holdover MP3 collector is such a small minority that no mainstream company is going to consider them from here on out. > is there any other free service where I could upload my MP3 collection to If there was, why would you waste your time? Either it's not going to be free or it's going to disappear.
- thanatos_dem 6y ago
  That was my Google Play Music use case as well. About a year ago I set up a plex server on my NAS and bulk downloaded my GPM library onto it (which to google’s credit was easy to do). Now I have them on my own hardware, and accessible on the go with the Plex app. It’s a better experience for video than audio, but it’s totally serviceable. There had been murmurs for a long time of Google Play Music going away, so I moved off ASAP. Looks like that was a good call.
  - apocalyptic0n3 6y ago
    That was my move as well. I already had a decently sized NAS with Plex that was accessible anywhere. The music experience through GPM and Spotify is better, but at least I can manage the music myself and I never have to worry about it going away (or some weird licensing or exclusivity issue not allowing me to listen to something I want to listen to). And my bootlegs, b-sides, remixes, and rare tracks that you can't get on streaming services is preserved too.
- 6y ago

crazygringo 6y ago

A bunch of people here are commenting about how Google is silently cancelling a lifetime price guarantee. But there's nothing in the thread about any lifetime guarantee, and Googling I can't find any reference either. Does anyone have actual evidence that Google explicitly made a lifetime price guarantee? It just seems... unusual, not something subscription services generally do. Also, this seems like more of a bug affecting some users, as opposed to intended policy. I mean, when Google cancels things, it usually provides months/years of advance notice with lots of e-mails. So I'm hesitant to jump in with my pitchfork here...

nyczomg 6y ago
I don't know what is true and what isn't, but it is funny that you used Google to research whether Google did something wrong. In this case, they might not be the best search engine to use....
josteink 6y ago
> A bunch of people here are commenting about how Google is silently cancelling a lifetime price guarantee. Early adopters were promised a fixed, permanently rebated price for signing up. I remember. I was one who took the offer (but later cancelled for other reasons).
- crazygringo 6y ago
  Do you have the original e-mail or anything you could paste here? I'm actually really curious to see the exact wording and fine print/TOS. Just because that's such a rare thing to do, above all by a large company, and I'm surprised it would have passed legal review, but the devil is often in the details.
  - josteink 6y ago
    I went looking, but I can’t find it now. Sorry.
    - 6y ago

Gravityloss 6y ago

Hmm. So I bought an album and a few songs there. They're apparently gone and I get some flow asking for credit card details. Apparently trying to sign me in for google music? Well, I had moved on to Spotify anyway.

Gravityloss 6y ago
Seems also the few movies I bought are gone. But they still sell them? That's certainly an interesting way of doing business. This is one of the movies I had bought. I could again "buy" it. Wonder who will fall for that for the second time... https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Kong_Skull_Island?id=qUD8xPGIbDQ https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Kong_Skull_Isla...
- Gravityloss 6y ago
  Ok, all the movies are back there now! Might have been user error on them some temporary issue. The music is also there but it just switches your user so you have to re-login with the correct user after going to the music menu...

abraham 6y ago

> Google responded to our inquiry to confirm that they are aware of the issue and working on fixing it. https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-music-subscriptions-are-failing-to-auto-renew-for-some/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-music-s...

Lammy 6y ago
Is it weird that the same site published this on the same day? https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-music-to-youtube-music-making-the-switch/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-music-t... Very strangely authoritarian wording, too: "It comes down to preference, but soon, you'll have no other choice but switching" "Unfortunately, the equation isn't that simple here because YouTube Music will replace Google Play Music one day. You have to accept YouTube Music's quirks if you currently use and love Play Music, or you have to switch to another platform altogether."

ashtonkem 6y ago

I know it's a bad trope at this point, but you really have to assume that Google will change anything on you. They're just not a consistent or good faith company to operate with, even compared to other companies in this space.

catacombs 6y ago

Never buy anything from Google.

modsWork4appl 6y ago
I've added Google to my Don't buy list. It's - Apple, Samsung, Google

maxdo 6y ago

This is the last drop. They ditched the google music in favor of half baked youtube music, with no playlist import, horrible offline support, tons of bugs that still there. I heard they are big somewhere in India. Well... good luck. I'm done and switching to Spotify. The only reason I was attracted by this terrible service was pricing. I subscribe from my country of origin at ~2 USD/mo subscription. For that price, I was ok with their quality.

outside1234 6y ago

Sort of like the lifetime guarantee that GCP claims to offer (until next year when it's shut down). It's sort of nuts to think anything Google does is going to be around in 5 years.

dbg31415 6y ago

Customer support, especially from Google, has been abysmal during Covid. I called a co-worker, and the number looked like a normal US number... Nope, it was a Canadian number, and AT&T charged me like $60 for a 30 minute call. Fuck that, it's the same country code. So I made the switch to Google Fi. I called Google Fi in advance, and asked how it would work with my Google Voice number. The support person said, "Yeah, you can't have the two kinds of Google numbers on the same email, but just make a new Google account and set you Google Fi number up under there, then forward your Google Voice number like you've been doing." Cool, easy. I do that. Mind you my whole family is on the plan, Mom, Dad, sister... and it's a big deal to switch. After the SIM cards were sent, I go to set my Google Voice number to forward. And it doesn't work. It tells me I can't forward a Google Voice number to a Google Fi phone. WTF. Then Covid hits. All of my work and emergency contact numnbers are routed through my Google Voice number, which I can inexplicably no longer forward to my phone. Google support lines are just playing recordings, "Not available." Live chat... oof, 40 minutes to have what should have been a 2 minute conversation. And it's either a bot, or someone just copying a script. It was horrible. And I had to try like 4 times. Hours wasted. Email support was worse. Nobody pays attention to context. Like they just go until they see a keyword they recognize and paste in a response template. I've got Google Voice to forward to my emails... so all my calls and texts were still sort of coming in. But I wanted to get it sorted with Google. I spell out a plan, email and ask them if it'll work. They say over email it will. I'm going to just drop my cell phone number and just use my Google Voice number on my cell. Easier than trying to update every place that had the old number. Oof. Then I'll switch the ownership from my Fake Google account to my Real Google account and turn off the Fake Google account line. Plan was signed off on by Google staff. Cool, I feel like it'll work. I get the new sim card, and it sort of works... except the fake Google account I used to set up the plan in the first place has to stay the owner. I can't change my real Google account to the owner on the family plan, I can't change anyone to the owner on the family plan. So I'm stuck paying for an extra line. Google's solution... "Just drop the family plan." No joke. Just kick everyone off onto their own plan, problem solved. I got 3 email templates telling me to do this -- that's how they want me to change the owner of the family plan. Oof. None of this will will kill me, and I'm glad they are keeping their employees safe... but none of this experience will ever put me in a spot to use Google again if I can avoid it. Their support is worse than any I've ever experienced. Response times suck, lack of training for their staff, lack of intelligence around how to solve problems... it just feels like I'm talking to bots whose first language wasn't English. Anyway totally frustrating experience, and it makes no sense. Why can't I forward a Google Voice number to a Google Fi phone? Shit like that is beyond me. And even with limiting product design, why wasn't Google Staff trained on that so they could give me proper advice when I first called? I was a huge Google Fiber fan, and I wanted to like Google Fi... but man... it's been such a hassle. I've got a 100+ response email thread now and it's all just missing the context copy / paste talk, or them ignoring the question and answering something else, or contradicting advice one person to the next. Oof.

OrangeMango 6y ago

I personally never trust anything that says lifetime guarantee. It just can't happen except in very unusual circumstances. I do have an anecdote that disproves my theory, however. My grandmother used to be an AT&T telephone operator, before they were broken up. As a retiree, she has "free lifetime AT&T", which they have been honoring even as the new company is not the company she retired from. She literally dials 0 and asks the person to connect her call for her. It costs her nothing.

bainsfather 6y ago
My father bought a lifetime subscription to the uk magazine 'Private Eye' in, iirc, the 1970s, for £10 (they were being sued and on the verge of going bust). He still gets his copy delivered every fortnight.

bobblywobbles 6y ago

For as much as we rely on their services and look to Google for advice on best practices and guidelines, time and time again services are simply dropped. On one hand, yes as a company I imagine you sneak some sneaky verbiage in the ToS so that you can't back yourself into a corner you can't get out of, but offering a lifetime subscription and it just being canceled - I just can't trust Google anymore to keep services up they "promise" will be there.

puppyprogram 6y ago

I was not on legacy but canceled my family plan anyway in solidarity. I guess back to piracy for me