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'YouTube Music is a Bad Product in Desperate Need of Improvement Before Anyone Will Care To Use It' (androidcentral.com)
Andrew Martonik, writing for AndroidCentral: YouTube Music as a service has been around for about three years now, though it really only existed in earnest once the revamped version of the YouTube Music app and dedicated website, as we know it today, launched in May. Whether you look at it as three years or just six months old, one thing is clear: YouTube Music isn't finished yet, is filled with issues and is incredibly frustrating to use on a daily basis considering it costs the industry-standard $10 per month.
YouTube Music is so unfinished and lacking features that I question whether Google has any intentions of following through with its vision of replacing Google Play Music entirely. Put simply, I can't believe Google thinks anyone will pay $10 per month for it when all signs point to Google itself not caring about YouTube Music's success. YouTube Music effectively doesn't work with Google Home. [...] YouTube Music also still doesn't work with Android Auto, which is just as inexcusable as not working with Google Home.
YouTube Music is so unfinished and lacking features that I question whether Google has any intentions of following through with its vision of replacing Google Play Music entirely. Put simply, I can't believe Google thinks anyone will pay $10 per month for it when all signs point to Google itself not caring about YouTube Music's success. YouTube Music effectively doesn't work with Google Home. [...] YouTube Music also still doesn't work with Android Auto, which is just as inexcusable as not working with Google Home.
This isn't a surprise. Google does most things halfway and will eventually cancel it.
I use good old youtube for listening to music in my car during my morning commutes. Using the google assistant, I say, "OK Google, youtube Chemical Brothers" and I used to get chemical brothers playback starting flawlessly on my drive without looking at my phone.
Last 6 months or so YT has employed strategies to curb this kind of use. Routinely the "Youtube Music" add with "FREE TRIAL MONTH" pops up and won't go away until I physically look for the "No thanks" button. That sort of distraction can lead to an accident. They've also employed the "Are you still listening?" and "Autoplayback paused" Luckily the latter 2 can be skipped by pressing a button on my bluetooth radio transmitter.
In the past I have thought, I will use google because they are a huge company. They aren't going to get bought or dismantled anytime soon. I won't have to deal with finding all new products.
Death of Google reader: OK, it's a big internet I can find another way to aggregate RSS feeds. And google says that's a dying technology anyhow.
Death of Google homepage: This one hurt a bit more. It was nice having a configurable homepage that I could point to the most personally relevant info on the web. I guess I can just make bookmarks and hit 5 different sites when I sit down.
Destruction of Google finance: So it's been a little less useful since google homepage died, but it's still nice to have my portfolio organized the way I want. All I have to do now is click on the shortcut. But wait, they just destroyed google finance. I can no longer even decide the top three stocks I want to show up on that page.
Death of Google hangouts: Great I finally got my entire group of family and friends to all use the same chat client. Now google says they are killing this by the end of next year. Hangouts, by the way, is the one reason chrome gets installed as soon as I build any PC.
So you are telling me that google has yet another project that they have released and are putting no love into. Go ahead, sign up, spend three years cultivating an app to play the music you want to listen too. Don't worry it will be fine. Google is a huge company. I'm sure you won't waste all of your effort getting this configured and trained, only to be abandoned on the growing list of google services that just cease to exist.
I have a pixel 3. I have youtubeTV for $35 a month. I use google search and chrome (huge advertising target). So, please don't tell me they don't make money from me using their products.
I think I'm done with Google. I really tried to be part of their ecosystem. They don't seem to care. So, I can't see myself caring to delve further into this bottomless pit of abandoned services.
Spotify is great. Why would anyone use anything made by Google if there are alternatives?
Good news is Google will most likely fold Music in another year or two, and the question will be moot.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
I know, Google is a joke. You can't enjoy any of their products without having the thought in your mind it'll be gone tomorrow on some asshole VP's whim. None of them appear to eat their own dog food either. They probably all have fucking iphones under the table playing their Apple music. Because who the fuck in their right mind (and this is coming from someone who only uses Android/Youtube Music) will stick with/pay for a service that is going to abruptly end or get worse. They only care about their pressure behind the scenes AI gathering usage and user opinion. They don't give a damn about what people even think anymore.
main reason I use it is b/c it gets the whole family YT without the ads (as a side-perk), which I value very much b/c my 8-yr old is a YT fiend on her ipad and I prefer her un-brainwashed by commercials. ;-) - on YT that doesn't happen b/c - like anyone - she can't resist the random links and ends up watching quite a variety of stuff. ;-)
Off topic but...
Her personal choice (I monitor her YT history) is to watch endless home-made vids created by other 8-12 year olds, which - while occasionally annoying to overhear - are harmless kid silliness and much richer creatively than the hours of garbage-grade mass produced kid cartoons my generation watched on broadcast TV.
At one point I put netflix on her ipad and took it off two days later b/c she started binge-watching entire series of crap (sound familiar?
The "Annoying Orange" channel tho. Damn. Aptly named. That's fine tho; kids are meant to like some things that irritate their parents.
[FrLz]
Many of us have learned not to adopt new Google services, period. They have taught us patiently over and over by rolling out Cool New Stuff and then deciding that it wasn't monetizing adequately (if they ever tried to do so, often they didn't) and pulled the plug, with little or no notice oftentimes.
Was it free? Not really, I am paying for it like other people do through Google's highly profitable ad business, and through my employer indirectly who uses their web business offerings and even GC. They just can't imagine that it makes sense to keep running services at modest cost as loss leaders to keep people happy with their ecosystem, and ready to adopt new offerings.
If Google offers anything new now I ignore it, since they are going to take it away anyway in a few years. They convinced me, finally, and I believe them.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
If you prefer curated playlists like I do, use DI.FM. It started with electronic music but evolved into a full music service with channels in all genres. The 64 kbps AAC+ mode saves a ton of bandwidth.
Google seems to be trying everything they can to recoup the operating costs of YouTube.
Kriston