Google this week laid out how Play Music will stop working in the coming months. With that on the horizon, YouTube Music is striving for feature parity, and the service is finally gaining the ability to have personal playlists be played from Google Assistant. However, this is still in testing with limited reach.
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Back in April, Google revamped YouTube Music’s Library to work more like Play Music, and now the Artists view is getting another upgrade to just show saved songs. It comes as the company this week detailed the shutdown timeline for Google Play Music.
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Google is preparing to shift all Google Play Music users over to YouTube Music in just a matter of weeks, but there are still a lot of loose ends to tie up to get to feature parity. Today, Google has confirmed that the Play Music app for Wear OS will die in just a couple of weeks, but YouTube Music isn’t coming any time soon.
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In May, the push to get Play Music users to switch to YouTube Music started in earnest with the launch of a long-awaited transfer tool. Google today explained the shutdown timeline for Play Music and fully detailed what’s going away.
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Last month, the full YouTube app on Android TV gained a dedicated “Music” section. Google is now offering a direct shortcut to that experience with a new YouTube Music “app.”
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Ahead of the eventual deprecation of Play Music, YouTube Music continues to introduce features from Google’s original streaming service to entice users to switch. The latest additions include a “Recent activity” section and setting to “Allow external devices to start playback.”
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Android TV’s YouTube app is getting a couple of welcome updates. Thanks to a server-side change, YouTube Music has arrived on Android TV through the bigger YouTube app — Yep, it’s super weird.
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As we’ve been tracking for the past several weeks, YouTube Music will soon let you create collaborative playlists with others. Additionally, the Google streaming service is providing machine learning-powered song suggestions.
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Besides offering a slew of its own, you can of course make your own playlists in YouTube Music. The experience has always been quite straightforward, but YouTube Music for Android is now offering “Suggestions” on which songs to add to playlists.
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Just before the Play Music transition, YouTube Music redesigned the Now Playing screen on Android. Google is now testing swipe gestures in the YouTube Music player for more intuitive control.
Even without the dedicated streaming service, YouTube is a top destination for people discovering and listening to music. Google’s video site today is introducing new Analytics for Artists within YouTube Studio.
YouTube Music continues to see a flurry of changes from Play Music migration to a revamped Now Playing experience. The latest YouTube Music test is a “Recent activity” carousel that shows library additions.
YouTube Music might be the successor to Google Play Music, but it still feels very much like a “work in progress.” As part of that, four new personalized mixes have been added to YouTube Music for you to enjoy.
The bulk of YouTube Music changes in recent weeks have benefited the Android app. An update to YouTube Music on the web sees Google streamline the quick start behavior, with users now able to play an album from the cover art.
The wider release of the YouTube Music migration tool for Google Play Music hasn’t been without issues but you can now add YouTube sidebar problems to the growing list.
Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming services available today, but like any other product it can improve to better compete with others. Following in the footsteps of YouTube Music, Spotify is apparently starting to build out a new video player on “Now Playing” UI.
Just last week, YouTube Music started letting Play Music users import their existing libraries. YouTube Music’s recently revamped Now Playing UI is today picking up a very useful “Related” tab.
Back in March, we spotted Google working on collaborative playlists for its primary streaming service. YouTube Music now has a “Collaborate” button, though the functionality is not yet active.
One month ago today, Google announced that it would start transitioning Play Music users to YouTube Music. The company explicitly said that the migration tool would become available “over the next couple of weeks.” A warning in YouTube Music today notes that “transfers are delayed” due to “high demand.”
Back in 2018, Google Maps added built-in media playback controls when navigating on iOS and Android. An update this week sees Google Maps finally support YouTube Music on the latter platform.
Playlists are at the heart of YouTube Music’s approach to discovery with several personalized for you in addition to a torrent of general ones. YouTube Music for Android and iOS have quietly gained “Playlist update notifications.”
YouTube Music has picked up a number of new features in recent weeks to attract Play Music users. A small tweak to the Android app updates the status bar icon to match the app’s logo.
More than other services, Google’s latest streaming service heavily leverages A/B tests when introducing new features. YouTube Music today is widely rolling out the revamped Now Playing UI and Explore tab to Android.
From user channels to a reorganized Library, Google’s primary music service in recent weeks has been slowly rolling out a slew of new features. YouTube Music will soon replace the “Hotlist” with a new “Explore” tab.
