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Google Play Music worked perfectly well for me, and I used it as a Spotify alternative, not even for the music library features. The switch to YouTube Music ha

Google Play Music worked perfectly well for me, and I used it as a Spotify alternative, not even for the music library features. The switch to YouTube Music has been terrible. Dead simple things don't work: my son would listen to a specific white noise track at night over his Google Home Mini. Previously, we could tell it to play the song, then say "repeat on" and it would repeat indefinitely until he woke up and turned it off. YouTube Music simply doesn't work repeating over a speaker. What's even more maddening: I can repeat a song indefinitely on the Android app, but once I cast to the Mini, THE OPTION TO LOOP IS CANCELLED AND DISAPPEARS. The only solution: I had to make a playlist that plays the same song for hours. From what I've read, it seems to me like this shift to YouTube Music is primarily a licensing issue. Rather than pay for streaming rights to music tracks, Google seems to be using the library of music it has on YouTube to retroactively backdoor a streaming service that plays the YouTube videos without the video. I suspect the repeat restrictions are a side-effect of this, somehow. I would switch to Spotify (and may still do so) but I'd still be held hostage to pay YouTube the same price to run without ads (the primary reason I bought the package in the first place), so my choice is to switch to Spotify and make my kids watch YouTube ads, or pay double. RIP Google Music indeed

tw04 6y ago
My biggest complaint is that discovering new music on youtube music is basically non-existent. I could pick a station on google music and find new songs I like within 3 songs. Youtube music, even on a "curated" list seems to always play the same 20-ish songs over and over again. I'm guessing this also has something to do with the licensing.
- ragazzina 6y ago
  This sounds really strange to me. I've never used Youtube music, but I've discovered much more music I like listening to normal Youtube with autoplay than with Spotify.
jimmydddd 6y ago
Re: Licensing Issue: I saw a list recently of the royalty rates different online music sites pay. Google Music was paying the highest rate, by far. So that is probably part of it.
- casefields 6y ago
  Nope. Google is in the middle of the pack. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/25/streaming-music-services-pay-2019/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/25/streaming-music-... https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts https://www.dittomusic.com/blog/how-much-do-music-streaming-services-pay-musicians https://www.dittomusic.com/blog/how-much-do-music-streaming-...
Drew_ 6y ago
> Google seems to be using the library of music it has on YouTube to retroactively backdoor a streaming service that plays the YouTube videos without the video. This is almost certainly not true. The on demand music available for YouTube Music was not previously available and all of it appears to be "auto-generated by YouTube" according to the description (eg: the audio for Thriller was only recently uploaded/auto-generated in 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z85lxckrtzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z85lxckrtzg). All of that music was likely licensed in the same way it was GPM and for any other DSP.
- B-Con 6y ago
  For a lot of the official content, yeah, that sounds right. But for the "unofficial" content? Absolutely, they were already arguably the largest music streaming sure to begin with, do they back fitted themselves into a proper streaming service. I saw the writing on the wall years ago. There was just no way execs wouldn't leverage such an obvious opportunity.
  - kevincox 6y ago
    I think the choice to merge Google Play Music into YouTube makes perfect sense. When you have the largest music streaming service (probably YouTube) why would you want to run another one. I love the idea that anyone can easily publish songs that I can listen to (no need for music labels) and that I can share playlists that friends can add arbitrary YouTube songs to without a subscription. The major issue is that they did a terrible job at it. To list a couple of issues: - Your uploaded music and the YouTube collection are completely separate (unlike GPM) - It buffers almost nothing ahead, even in bad network conditions so it fails on road trips. - The song suggestions are awful. (way worse than GPM) - Even if you dislike a song it will still suggest it for you (often frequently) - A lot of features missing (sure, they wouldn't get them all, but so many are gone). The list goes on. I was a GPM subscriber for a long time. I used to work at Google so I decided I would help beta-test YouTube Music. However it quickly became clear that it wasn't going to be a good replacement for GPM. I ended up switching away from YouTube Premium and YouTube Music.

tw04 6y ago

My biggest complaint is that discovering new music on youtube music is basically non-existent. I could pick a station on google music and find new songs I like within 3 songs. Youtube music, even on a "curated" list seems to always play the same 20-ish songs over and over again. I'm guessing this also has something to do with the licensing.

ragazzina 6y ago
This sounds really strange to me. I've never used Youtube music, but I've discovered much more music I like listening to normal Youtube with autoplay than with Spotify.

jimmydddd 6y ago

Re: Licensing Issue: I saw a list recently of the royalty rates different online music sites pay. Google Music was paying the highest rate, by far. So that is probably part of it.

casefields 6y ago
Nope. Google is in the middle of the pack. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/25/streaming-music-services-pay-2019/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/25/streaming-music-... https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts https://www.dittomusic.com/blog/how-much-do-music-streaming-services-pay-musicians https://www.dittomusic.com/blog/how-much-do-music-streaming-...

Drew_ 6y ago

> Google seems to be using the library of music it has on YouTube to retroactively backdoor a streaming service that plays the YouTube videos without the video. This is almost certainly not true. The on demand music available for YouTube Music was not previously available and all of it appears to be "auto-generated by YouTube" according to the description (eg: the audio for Thriller was only recently uploaded/auto-generated in 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z85lxckrtzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z85lxckrtzg). All of that music was likely licensed in the same way it was GPM and for any other DSP.

B-Con 6y ago
For a lot of the official content, yeah, that sounds right. But for the "unofficial" content? Absolutely, they were already arguably the largest music streaming sure to begin with, do they back fitted themselves into a proper streaming service. I saw the writing on the wall years ago. There was just no way execs wouldn't leverage such an obvious opportunity.
- kevincox 6y ago
  I think the choice to merge Google Play Music into YouTube makes perfect sense. When you have the largest music streaming service (probably YouTube) why would you want to run another one. I love the idea that anyone can easily publish songs that I can listen to (no need for music labels) and that I can share playlists that friends can add arbitrary YouTube songs to without a subscription. The major issue is that they did a terrible job at it. To list a couple of issues: - Your uploaded music and the YouTube collection are completely separate (unlike GPM) - It buffers almost nothing ahead, even in bad network conditions so it fails on road trips. - The song suggestions are awful. (way worse than GPM) - Even if you dislike a song it will still suggest it for you (often frequently) - A lot of features missing (sure, they wouldn't get them all, but so many are gone). The list goes on. I was a GPM subscriber for a long time. I used to work at Google so I decided I would help beta-test YouTube Music. However it quickly became clear that it wasn't going to be a good replacement for GPM. I ended up switching away from YouTube Premium and YouTube Music.