Google is at it once again. For some unknown reason, later this year, they are deprecating Google Play Music (GPM) for YouTube Music (YM). What the hell is wrong with this company? They always feel the need to fix things that aren’t broken or to kill off products. I’ve been using GPM since it was first available and it was by far the easiest way to listen to my music library. Today I received the link to transfer my library and playlists from one to the other. So far I am not impressed whatsoever with YM.
YM is too graphic heavy. It’s pushing video all the time. There are three tabs on the bottom. Home, Explore, and Library. On the home screen I’m greeted with junk. Today is Juneteenth (which is a dumb name and should be changed to Emancipation Day or something else more appropriate because Juneteenth is not a word and doesn’t mean anything) and front and center are things relating to Juneteenth. I don’t care! I just want to get to my music and not be pushed to engage in stuff that doesn’t matter to me.
Next I hop on over to the Library tab. I’m greeted with what YM thinks is my most recent activity. It is not correct. The recent activity also included the Billboard Top 50 Christian Songs Playlist. I have never listened to this playlist… EVER. There is no way to get rid of that selection either.
Frequently I go to either a playlist I set up or I go directly to the artist I want to hear. In YM I tap on the Artists tab and the next screen has two tabs at the top. YT Music and Uploads. But let’s start with the list of Recently Added things. Who the fuck is Chris August? I’ve never heard of him and never listened to him. I don’t want to click on it either to find out in fear that Google’s algorithm will somehow think it’s something I want. Forgetting about Mr. August for a moment. The list is not what I recently added. It’s not the same as the recent activity on the last screen either. Shouldn’t the two things be related?
Let’s say I want to listen to Lianne La Havas. I tap on her name in the recently added list and I’m presented with a giant picture of her links to shuffle play, radio, an icon for her latest release, and the beginnings of her top songs. In GPM you would see the artists top songs right away and more than just one would be present. But scrolling down isn’t much better. After a few more of her tops songs the next thing you see is simply Albums and after that simply Singles. Are these all her albums and singles? Are they part of my library? What are they? After that you get the categories of Videos, Featured On, and Fans might also like.
You know what I want when I get to the artists page? I want to know if they have released anything new (which is fine here) and I want to get to the tracks in my library. After all that’s why I’m in the Library section of the app. But nowhere can I tell what is supposed to be in my library. In GPM there is a section on the artists page that shows exactly what’s in your library. I don’t have to guess or remember what is mine and what is other stuff in their catalog.
The next tab on the artists page is Uploads. This is a totally useless tab. It lists everything I’ve uploaded by artist alphabetically. But it’s not smart at all. In the pic above take a look at the bottom two uploads. They are separate tracks from the same album and YM lists them as if they are from different artists even though they are from the same artist and album. The metadata on the song lists the artist as being different on these two tracks because Alicia Keys gives credit to other artists that are on each track. This is stupid. It does that for several artists and albums. Any time an artist is featuring another artist and it’s in the metadata it will list it as if it is a different artist. This makes this tab unusable.
All I can say is thank you to Google. They are going to save me $9.99 per month because I will be cancelling my Play Music subscription as soon as the GPM app disappears. I’m not paying for YM and it’s pain in the ass music app.
I’ve already started to migrate over to using my own cloud media server from Subsonic. This is simple software that you install on your computer, tell it where your media files are located, install an app on your phone, and access your own music library anywhere in the world. It’s not as elegant as GPM and not as user friendly but the premium version only costs $1/month.
For other music that I want to sample I’ll use Amazon Music. I already pay for Prime. If I want new music I’ll buy it, download it to my PC, and stream it using my own personal cloud.
I’m so sick of Google doing this to their apps and services. I already stopped using Chrome and mostly stopped using Google.com for search. Next I have to figure out how to extricate myself from Gmail. If it wasn’t for their superior spam filtering I would have stopped using that long ago.
Back to wrapping up my opinion on YM. Don’t use it. It sucks balls.