[Someone1234]

What surprises me most about your post is that someone actually worked on Google Play Music for multiple years. Doing what?

From what I could see, it shipped, then immediately turned into abandoned-ware which it still is today (in spite of being "replaced" by YouTube Music which is also abandoned-ware almost from its release).

I actually still pay for GPM (for Ad-Free YouTube) but also pay for Amazon's Unlimited because Amazon's Music offering actually consistently works well and makes music discovery pleasant. Or to phase another way, I actually pay money to avoid using GPM or YT Music which I could use for "free." They're that terrible.

[ssully]

I used to use Google Play Music but switched to Apple Music after they announced they were shutting it down. I tried switching to Youtube Music, but the UI was easily the worst out of any music service I've tried. Last time I used it the first few rows on your home screen were suggested music video's, which is not at all what I come to for a music app for. Maybe most people use music app's differently then me, but I think someone made a mistake by prioritizing Youtube Music over Google Play Music.

[Shebanator]

I worked on GPM prior to the youtube merge, and for a short time after. We did a lot of things: when I first started there it didn't offer streaming subscriptions at all, or radio, or....

[creato]

It may be abandonware, but it works well, and has very few bugs. I hope it stays abandoned in its current state for a long time.

[willis936]

I've been using play music since it came out and I pay for youtube red or w,e it's currently branded. I can't deny that the reason I chose it is still valid: I can upload my music and stream it. I have obscure stuff that is not in any licensed streaming service and it's nice to be able to pull it up on any computer.

However, there are many severe issues.

* It crashes every single time the app is closed in iOS.

* The ability to edit metadata is missing in iOS.

* iOS integration is missing features that are present in apple music and spotify, such as appearing as a music player in all contexts relevant to the OS.

* Duplicate tracks show up everywhere.

* Playlists often do not update when changes are made to them.

* Playlists sometimes just go missing for a while.

* The web browser interface gets out of sync often.

* It is not clear when tracks are ones in your library or from google's licensed library.

* Uploaded tracks are often deduplicated without warning or notice, resulting in lightly modified tracks and rare releases to be replaced with licensed versions.

* Sometimes I cannot get things to upload without trying a dozen times across multiple days.

This is par for google and it is bar none the the worst software I choose to use.

[OkGoDoIt]

Sadly it’s my understanding that they plan to shut down google play music completely in favor of YouTube music at some point this year (at least according to a friend-of-a-friend who works on it). It’s already quite buggy and frustrating, but I still use it mainly because I am on the grandfathered $8/month plan and also get ad-free YouTube included.

That being said I went through my Google Play billing recently and realized I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on Google Play Music over the years. I don’t think I’ve listened to that much money’s worth of music considering the songs are about a dollar each to buy and I don’t add that many new songs every year.

Someone should build a tool that scans your streaming library on Google Play Music/Apple Music/Spotify or whatever and adds all of those tracks to an Amazon MP3 shopping cart to help you transition off the recurring service. I wouldn’t be surprised if something exists that does something similar using torrents.

[nvarsj]

Maybe it’s better now. But for years basic playlist functionality on google music was buggy for me (randomly reordering songs and some other issues I have forgotten). Also no Linux app. Finally swapped to Spotify and never looked back. But I really miss being able to upload my old music.

[OkGoDoIt]

It’s been many years since I’ve used Spotify but I remember they had the ability to add your own custom music to your library. Is that no longer the case?

[wyre]

You can still play songs locally on Spotify, but what it lacks compared to GPM is the ability to upload songs and listen to them on another device.

[jochs]

I assume you're using it on Android and not on iOS. The Android client was actually really lovely from a UX perspective, even if I had some complaints about general functionality GPM was missing. When I switched to iOS this past year I immediately ditched GPM for Spotify because the interface was unintuitive and clunky and I haven't looked back.

[komali2]

Well one form of music being added to it is gone now that they nuked the artist portal thing.

[Drew_]

> What surprises me most about your post is that someone actually worked on Google Play Music for multiple years. Doing what?

GPM has been offered as a service for nearly a decade and has numerous dramatic changes and improvements over the years. Google Play Music is not even its original name and it did not even originally offer a subscription. It was created as a service for streaming music you owned from the cloud.