[pcf]

That is so sad to hear. I absolutely loved Google Play Music – especially features like saving e.g. an online Universal Music release to my "archive" and then for myself being able to actually RENAME TRACKS with e.g. wrong metadata.

That and being able to mix my own uploaded tracks with online music releases into a curated collection almost made it a viable contender to my local iTunes collection.

And then... they just removed it forever. Bastards.

[cmrdporcupine]

Yep, YTM is/was so clearly the inferior product it's laughable. Even as a Google employee with a discount etc (I can't remember what that was, but) on these things I switched to Spotify when they dropped it.

I worked on a team that wrote software for Chromecast based devices. The YTM app didn't even support Chromecast, our own product, and their responses on bug tickets from Googlers reporting this as a problem was pretty arrogant. It was very disheartening to watch. Complete organizational dysfunction.

I think YTM has substantially improved since then, but it still has terrible recommendations, and it still bizarrely blurs between video and music content.

Google went from a company run by engineers to one run by empire-building product managers so fast, it all happened in a matter of 2-3 years.