At the start of August, Google provided an official timeline for shutting down YouTube Music’s predecessor. Google Play Music has now stopped working for many users on Android, iOS, and the web.
Upon opening the app, a splash page tells you that “Google Play Music is no longer available.” Users are presented with two options to “Manage your data” or “Transfer to YouTube Music.”
You can still transfer your library, including playlists and uploads, for a limited time.
As of Thursday morning, Play Music has stopped working for quite a few users using different clients around the globe. However, some still have access, with the process slowly picking up speed since the start of this month.
It comes as YouTube Music has been working to add a slew of features to make it a proper alternative:
- Free YouTube Music users can now use Android Auto app to play uploaded songs
- YouTube Music free users can download playlists containing uploaded tracks
- YouTube Music on Android TV gets library & uploads access, UI tweaks, background play coming
- YouTube Music’s free tier now lets you cast uploaded songs to smart speakers
This process started back in September for GPM users in New Zealand and South Africa. That was then followed by the Play Music store for buying individual tracks and albums shutting down worldwide earlier this month.
In losing the ability to “stream from or use the Google Play Music app” today, Google is on to the final phase where it will retain playlists, uploads, purchases, likes, and other data until December. The YouTube Music migration tool and Google Takeout export will be available until then. After that, Google will delete user data, thus culminating in the final end of Play Music.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Comments