Photo Credit: YouTube
Google has slowly improved YouTube Music with personalized mixes and more. However, the cloud locker feature available in Google Play Music is still absent.
Now an APK teardown performed by 9to5Google reveals the feature may be coming soon. Version 3.47 of the YouTube music app includes code references to a distinct partition in your account.
The first is for streaming content that can be saved by liking or subscribing to an artist. Next to subscriptions is a ‘Library’ function, which is what Google is calling your uploaded tunes. A Songs page offers a look that includes uploads and liked tracks.
Right now, this is just speculation, but it’s a feature many Google Play Music fans have wanted for ages.
I recently made the switch to Spotify after being an early adopter of Google Play Music. The lack of updates and the focus on YouTube Music and its premium subscription pushed me away from the service.
That hasn’t stopped YouTube Music from becoming one of the most-downloaded apps on Android, though. YouTube recently joined the free trial arms race by giving certain countries access to a three-month trial period.
In October 2019, Google tried to update YouTube Music’s personalized playlists to be more like Apple Music and Spotify. Personalized playlists like ‘Discover Mix,’ ‘New Release Mix,’ and ‘Your Mix’ are suspiciously similar to Spotify’s playlists.
If the cloud locker feature is finally ported over to YouTube Music, that’s the final nail in the coffin for GPM. Google launched the service in 2011, and since then, the world of music streaming has changed drastically.
Google’s music strategy shifted from offering a branded music service through YouTube, rather than a standalone service. Once the cloud locker feature arrives for YouTube Music, Google will probably look into shutting down GPM in favor of it.
I gave up waiting for Google to either improve YTM or reprieve GPM. When I found I could move over to Amazon HD (lossless) for just a couple bucks a month more, I jumped. And despite 6 years and a big library of favorites (that I used a playlist transfer utility to grab a text file list of), I haven’t really looked back.
GPM worked about the way I wanted and had developed really good discovery options over the years — but their sound quality was crummy even for the 320 kbps lossy format that was their hi-est fi. (By contrast, the old MOG used LAME-encoded 320 mp3s that sounded *noticeably* better [and differentiable by double blind ABX test].)