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Comment by minitoar | Hacker News Reader

I thought the transition to youtube music was pretty painless. All my uploaded songs are still there. Also, some things that were not available on google music (too obscure?) are available on youtube, and by extension the youtube music app.

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It was painless, but the UI for YouTube is awful. Album lists are slower to load, the integration with Google home is worse, and the app doesn't let you play music with your screen off.

And it doesn't prioritize the music I have uploaded so I regularly get garbage YouTube versions instead. Google music worked, YouTube music is horrible. I'm back to using an mp3 player of sorts. I bought a JellyPro, disabled all apps apart from a music player and added some automation via magisk to turn on airplane mode when it's not plugged in, and turn the device of after an hour "idle" (not playing music, not plugged in). Best damn mp3 player ever. I get wifi sync, album art download, tag editor, last.fm scrobbling (caches tracks while airplane mode is on) and with the modifications I made, crazy battery life (especially considering how poor the jelly Pro battery is)

These days a 200gb sdcard is dirt cheap, so I can fit my entire collection on it.

Thanks for reminding me about another. The desktop version forces you to play videos for songs you've uploaded unless you have a subscription. Waste of bandwidth.

Foobar on Android works fine; and if you bought a phone that takes an sdcard you can fit an enormous library on it.

... you can't listen to music you paid for without having the screen on?

Wow. Just wow.

Good job Google, you made something worse than a Walkman. A Walkman could clip on your belt and you didn't have to worry about jostling it or touching it wrong and so having it do something wrong.

30 years later and the tech industry builds something inferior and calls it better.

It’s not really comparable. You cannot play any song at a moments notice on your Walkman, just what you are physically carrying with you.

I almost never want or need a large library when I listen to music; I have an inclination to listen to an album or long DJ mix and that will be what I listen to for the next hour.

Moreover, you just compared the two and noticed a difference. They are comparable, and Youtube is inferior for listening to music you've paid for if you don't feel inclined to pay a subscription fee for the privilege of listening to it.

It’s not comparable in the sense that you’re comparing an offline experience with an online one. It’s like comparing a knapsack of books to a library.

Google Music was an offline-capable service. It's valid to compare Youtube Music to offline services because paying users had the expectation it would work.

You were comparing a Walkman which is only offline last I checked.

Take note of what features I compared:

> Good job Google, you made something worse than a Walkman. A Walkman could clip on your belt and you didn't have to worry about jostling it or touching it wrong and so having it do something wrong.

Google Music was able to operate offline, and it didn't require your attention while playing.

A Walkman is offline and didn't require your attention while playing.

Youtube Music requires your attention while playing.

Not requiring your attention while playing is a critical, minimal feature of a mobile music device.

yt music can play without the screen on. at least on android

Only with a paid subscription. Google music let you do it without.

> the app doesn't let you play music with your screen off

It does, but without a subscription, only music you uploaded or purchased.

This isn't my experience. Songs I uploaded are not playable without a subscription when the screen is off.

Perhaps it's actually a music video of a song you uploaded? Try browsing to the song in question through Library -> Uploads.

I don't have a subscription either and double checked I can play my uploads with the screen off.

Yes, I uploaded the album. Yt music plays a video on any song it has a vevo video for.

Right, you have to find your actual upload, not the video. They are different, the video is NOT your upload.

I agree this is a bit confusing, but I hadn't really struggled with it since I play my uploaded music from albums and playlists, not search.

> It was painless, but the UI for YouTube is awful.

Yes, has anyone noticed that in dark mode shuffle button state is completely invisible for color-blind people? I'm most probably deuteranomal and I have no clue if shuffle is on or off :(

I even took a screenshot and the colors there are exactly the same, what is happening?

And the autogenerated playlists are static (so if you make a generated playlist from the same source on different days you'll get the same songs in the same order) and aren't infinite (so it'll eventually just repeat instead of continuing to find more to play or reshuffling existing songs), which really sucks.

The habit of youtube music to include individual songs and multi-hour mixes in the same playlist isn't exactly great, either.

I believe if you’ve paid for it you can play music with the screen off.

That's correct (as I mentioned below). Paying was not a requirement for google music to do that.

I have found a couple of albums in YT Music where the songs are not listed in the real album order. It drives me nuts when I'm listening to an album and the songs play in the wrong order. Its also weird because the same albums had the correct order in Google Play Music.

have they added playlist folders yet? that's the main reason I ditched Google music and went back to Spotify. it was too clunky having a single list of playlists with no way to organise them. i have maybe 300 playlists now on Spotify and there's no way i could have managed that with Google music

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