Are you ready to switch to YouTube Music?

By Joe Maring
published

YouTube Music on a Pixel 4 XL
YouTube Music on a Pixel 4 XL (Image credit: Joe Maring / Android Central)

Yesterday, Google took a big step forward with its efforts to consolidate its music streaming options. Google Play Music and YouTube Music have co-existed alongside each other for nearly two years at this point, but now, there's a transfer tool to bring over all of your songs, playlists, and listening history from Play Music over to YouTube Music.

This is a shift we've been expecting for a while, and thankfully, the transfer process Google's created is just about as easy as we could have hoped for. That said, not everyone is excited about the change.

Taking a look through the AC forums, there are plenty of people that aren't ready to leave Play Music quite yet.

Oh, no... I am OBSESSED with Google Play Music. This cannot be!

Morty2264

I have YouTube Premium family for £17.99 a month for 5 or 6 accounts. I get YouTube Premium, YouTube Music and GPM included with that. So I think it is excellent value. I like GPM especially on my Google Home devices. But I am ok about moving to YT music if I can keep my music library in the cloud.

Kizzy Catwoman

Google has me - even if I don't want to use YouTube Music. Ad-Free YouTube is too valuable for me. Getting a music service out of it is just a bonus.

Ry

I knew this would happen eventually. I'm not getting YTM. I still have some music on GPM . But most of my music is through Spotify now. I still have the bundle with Spotify / Hulu and together its around 10 dollars.

davidnc

What about you? Are you ready to switch to YouTube Music?

Join the conversation in the forums!

Joe Maring
Joe Maring

Joe Maring was a Senior Editor for Android Central between 2017 and 2021. You can reach him on Twitter at @JoeMaring1.

9 Comments
  • It doesn't really matter to me, as long as I can continue to download free content from either.
  • YouTube looks a lot cleaner and it has a dark mode so I'm ready to switch.
  • Nope. Won't switch. I'll close my GPM account first.
    YouTube's focus is, was and always will be video. Not audio.
    Given what I've read, talking about no codec standard, bad audio quality and other issues, I will not use that service.
  • I have, don't look at many videos and songs are selected by default. In the settings you can turn off video. Why not try it out first?
  • The audio quality on YouTube music is actually better than Spotify, you can make it play mostly music and not videos by changing an option in the settings. You couldn't be anymore misinformed.
  • It's really got quite good over the last four weeks. The playlists are good, the streaming reliable over Google speakers, TV. Before it kept breaking, but Google play music and Spotify were fine. It has dark mode. I wish it had a breakdown of genre for new releases etc. I just can't wait to have my library from GPM to be transferred...
  • The casting is still wonky
  • My YT Music app was updated on my phone (Pixel 4) yesterday, but I still don't have the option to transfer my library from Play Music.
  • I haven't been able to find an answer yet to this: Will YTM insert ads if I'm listening to my uploaded music and not on a paid plan? I use GPM for listening to stuff I own and uploaded (or bought through GPM), not streaming stuff I don't own. Either way, not being able to switch apps without stopping playback, etc makes this sound like a definite step down from GPM. Edit: Finally found the answer on a Google blog. "You can play uploaded songs in the background, ad-free and offline - even if you are not currently a YouTube Music Premium subscriber. You can also cast uploaded content, or play it from smart speakers and Sonos."