If you happened to open the Google Play Music app and saw the message in the app “Google Play Music is no longer available”, you are not alone. Google Play Music app is not the slickest of music players out there to be fairly honest, but being included by default in Android phones, it is used by billions of users. Despite the fact that Google Play Music has more than 5 billion users, it’s still slated to go. Most people saw the message that it’s going away by end of October this year.
Google is known for shutting down applications from time to time. We have seen many such actions in the past as well, in favor of better parallel applications. For example: Picasa shut down in favor of Google Photos.
To accommodate the transition from Google Play Music, Play Music users can now opt to transfer over their tracks to YouTube Music. Google is now beginning to display banners on both platforms, prompting people to make the switch.
Now that it is no longer available, users can now use YouTube music if they want to continue using Google product, or can find some other players if they only intent to play offline downloaded music.
The transfer tool is available in both the web and through the mobile apps. On the net, it’s over at music.youtube.com/transfer, while on the apps, it’s accessible through the banner message.
If users do not want to transfer to YouTube Music, users can download their data via Google Takeout, or delete it through Play Music’s account settings. Play Music data that is not transferred or downloaded will eventually be deleted, as per Google.
YouTube Music will automatically be available for devices running Android TV once Google Play Music stops running. Google is focusing on having one music streaming app and has been rolling out features and improvements to YouTube Music to make it as user-friendly as possible.
The YouTube music app may not be at par with Google Music as of now, but eventually it will be improved and more features may be added in the coming days.