[kyrra]

(Googler, opinions are my own)

Agreed that it is annoying, but its interesting to look back at how we got here. Google Play Music (GPM) launched in 2011. To get music on here, I'm guessing that team had to sign contracts with the various publishers and record studios. The onboarding and licensing terms of those were likely entirely around this music streaming service.

Then you have Youtube. It's been a video hub for anything, and other those 9 years since GPM launched, it has become a place where lots of people listen to music (watching music videos or the like). You have companies like Vevo that publish music content there. I'd guess Youtube has different contracts with those companies that have evolved over time about how music can be played.

So over these past 9 years, 2 products that had little overlap, have started to overlap more and more. As youtube expanded, it started butting into GPM's world. That likely was odd for Google for contracts and licensing of that content. Youtube Music (YTM) likely allows them to do it all under one silo now. Plus, YTM lets you do background music or videos, which is not something you could ever really do with GPM.

[vl]

> but its interesting to look back at how we got here.

Oh, please, I worked at Google as well, and this is typical Google’s inability to have attention span and coherent leadership for anything longer than 6 months. One VP did one thing, then another one another, then it turned out that it’s stupid and inconsistent. As. with. any. other. non-core product! Basically Google’s top leadership doesn’t care enough to impose coherent strategy across different divisions, and thing like this happen all the time (Android/Chrome OS, Chat/GVC/Hangouts/Allo/Duo/RCS/Meet, Gmail/Inbox, Nest/Google Home, and so on).

[ewmiller]

Contracts seem like a very weird motivation for this. Why completely overhaul the user experience by getting rid of an entire application for consuming music and trying to shoehorn it into another, instead of just keeping two separate entities with separate licenses?

Even if the motivation makes some sense, the user experience is worse and I have very little faith that Google will maintain YTM long enough that I should invest in using it. The way Google does things means that in five years it will probably be on its way out in favor of the next rebrand that will get some product manager a promotion. Spotify, meanwhile, is still kicking after 10 or so years with no signs of slowing down or forcing users into a completely different app. i’ll stick with that, personally.

[im_down_w_otp]

>Plus, YTM lets you do background music or videos, which is not something you could ever really do with GPM

It doesn't. It forces you to watch videos (if you're steaming to your home stereo or other casting enabled device) and prioritizes the video versions of everything, even if the video isn't officially from the artist and us just some random person's resubmission.

The user experience is almost impossibly terrible. It seems like the kind of curated experience one would concoct if they were trying to prank someone with an intentionally frustratingly hostile UX.

[grey]

I have the opposite frustration here, where I queue up some music videos on my TV and inevitably after 1-2 songs, I'm staring at static album covers when I know there's an awesome music video that should be playing instead

[sdenton4]

(There's an option in the settings to turn videos off and just play album versions of songs.)

[im_down_w_otp]

It doesn't apply to when you're casting things to a Chromecast via Google Assistant on a Google Home device.

[viraptor]

I'm not sure why the licensing would impact the app in any way. They could swap the backend, keeping the better app. The background video is just one feature to add compared to trying to fix the YTM many problems.

[kyrra]

Point taken. Maybe this was just one of many factors? I could also see that Google had products that were overlapping (Youtube and GPM), and they decided to merge them, and this is the way they did it?

I definitely had friends that used Youtube as a poor-mans spotify and would just keep the videos playing in the background on their desktop.

[felipelemos]

spoiler Big rant below:

> I could also see that Google had products that were overlapping (Youtube and GPM), and they decided to merge them, and this is the way they did it?

If it's the way they did, it was one of the worst ways anyone could think of. It baffled me how so many smart minds can work at Google and take so many terrible decisions at the same time.

This was just one in several equally stupid decisions they did. They could have dominated the messaging market by now, but they threw out that chance several times.

Sometimes I think it might have been on purpose. Maybe they are afraid to dominate too many markets at the same time and avoid a anti trust lawsuit? Because otherwise it literally makes no sense. Either this or they need to feed their stupid hierarchical loop giving senseless promotions to whoever creates a new thing that nobody asked for by destroying another thing that people were starting to use and like.

[kemonocode]

Ah, so that's probably the reason behind the incredibly grating "Are you still watching?" modal interrupting the video.

[lern_too_spel]

GPM always allowed playing music in the background, even for free. YTM charging for it is a regression.

[IanCal]

> Plus, YTM lets you do background music or videos, which is not something you could ever really do with GPM.

I'm sorry, what? Are you saying that Google play music would only play music if in the foreground? That's flat out wrong.

[perryizgr8]

> YTM lets you do background music or videos, which is not something you could ever really do with GPM

The entire point of a music player is to play music in the background.

[josteink]

> YTM lets you do background music or videos, which is not something you could ever really do with GPM.

What are you talking about? You could always do this with GPM.

It was YTM which added the requirement for a paid account to keep allowing this very same thing.

You have things completely backwards.

[xiphias2]

I just read that YTM has only 256 bit AAC just like YouTube. Going down in audio quality is a step in the wrong direction. There's just no point in installing 5G in so many countries when the encoding bit rates are going down for services.

[ValentineC]

Bitrate isn't everything in audio — MP3 (which Google Play Music uses) is a much older format compared to AAC.

I like Hydrogen Audio for theory and comparisons: https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Hydrogenaudio_Li...

[harshitaneja]

Non audiophiles don't require more than 256kbps which is about the highest you can do for AAC anyway. Sure 320kbps can on some occasions be better on consumer hardware but I am not sure most will notice a difference. So maybe 320kbps but I am really skeptical of people who need more. Obviously there is a lot more to digital audio than bitrate.

[cageface]

The reality is most people struggle to distinguish 128kbit AAC from the original, especially in typical listening conditions.

[andybak]

Pretty sure I remember Hydrogen Audio did a bunch of ABX tests that showed nobody (including so-called "golder ears") could distinguish 160kbps (or maybe it was 192) VBR MP3 from uncompressed - assuming a good encoder was used.

[toyg]

I’m absolutely not an audiophile and I don’t know what Spotify does, but their audio quality has gone down the drain of late. I suspect streaming services are all trying hard to reduce costs by converging towards quality levels similar to what we had with FM radio and early MP3s, i.e. pretty shit overall but good enough to feel that pop/dance “phat bass”.

[xeromal]

What do you mean by background? Like play in the background?

[ewmiller]

I assume so. Spotify has a feature somewhat like this, but I keep it turned off because I find it annoying and distracting. It’s a bit silly to try to justify a huge move like this based on such a trivial feature, in my opinion.

[xeromal]

I'm not sure I follow really. Any music player I've used plays in the background. I throw in some headphones and it plays without the screen being on. I'm not really sure how else it can go in the background but I know I'm missing something. lol

[kyrra]

See: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6308116?hl=en

> Play videos on your mobile device while using other apps or when your screen is off. Background play is available on YouTube, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids mobile apps (if these apps are available in your location).

They only allowed background play on Youtube with a subscription.

[netsharc]

Hah, just like Porsche having an idea of more horsepower for a monthly fee (or pay per fun afternoon's drive) or Musk's self-driving subscription idea, now it's "Pay if you want to be able to browse Instagram while listening to music"/pay if you want to be able to turn your screen off.

Friend of mine who isn't me still downloads MP3s on torrents and has no cloud subscriptions. I'm sure he's smug about this.

[jkaplowitz]

I believe it's a subscription feature for YouTube Music as well. The link you provided indicates that this requires a YouTube Premium subscription, though a bit more digging on that page and https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/6313552?hl=en suggests that the minimum required subscription is actually YouTube Music Premium (this is included as part of YouTube Premium).

[Teever]

I've often wondered about what percent of battery drain on smartphones is directly attributable to this business model choice and therefore exactly how many smartphones have ended up in landfills before they needed to because Google ultimately prioritizes a few dollars over the environment.