Google Play Music Shuttering Permanently

The latest casualty in the streaming wars, it seems Google has decided to throw in the towel on their Google Play Music service, and will be replacing it with YouTube Music. Fortunately, users will have the opportunity to transfer their music libraries before Google Play Music goes away for good.

Guest post by Randi Zimmerman of the Symphonic Blog

Google Play Music has announced that they will be officially shutting down and being replaced with YouTube Music in December 2020. Here’s everything you need to know…

Google Play Music is Officially Shutting Down

The merger between YouTube and Google Play has been in the works for some time now. Finally, they’ve announced that it’ll be running its course by the end of the year. In the meantime, users will have the opportunity to transfer their music libraries from Google Play Music to YouTube Music.

To transfer over content and purchases, users can:

• Transfer over their content using this transfer tool provided by YouTube Music
• Use Google Takeout to export data and download their purchased and uploaded music

In an official blog post on August 4th, YouTube announced, “Starting in September 2020 in New Zealand and South Africa — and in October for all other global markets — users will no longer be able to stream from or use the Google Play Music app…”

“But don’t worry, we will be holding onto things like your playlists, uploads, purchases, likes and more until December 2020 to make your transfer to YouTube Music easier. Users who wish to transfer their music libraries from Google Play Music to YouTube Music, can do so through December 2020, after which their Google Play Music libraries will no longer be available.”

Introducing: New and Improved Features

Since the merger first started, the platforms have been upgrading their features to improve user experience. Here’s what’s new…

Player Page Redesign

• Updates to the player page
• Finally available for Android mobile users
• Provides a more modern design that allows better playback controls
• Easier access to related music and other features like song lyrics

Explore Tab

• Available on both mobile and the web
• Find new releases including albums, singles, and music videos, as well as browse a vast catalog of diverse playlists through the Moods & Genre section

Assistive Playlist Creation

• Quickly and easily create playlists by adding recommended songs based on existing songs in the playlist, as well as personalized signals, such as watch history and likes.

Collaborative Playlists

• Collaborate with other music fans to create shared playlists for any occasion.

New Programmed Playlists

• Let’s users explore newly launched programmed playlists

These are just a couple of the updated features added to the platform. // To learn more, click here to check out YouTube’s official announcement.