I think the choice to merge Google Play Music into YouTube makes perfect sense. When you have the largest music streaming service (probably YouTube) why would you want to run another one.
I love the idea that anyone can easily publish songs that I can listen to (no need for music labels) and that I can share playlists that friends can add arbitrary YouTube songs to without a subscription.
The major issue is that they did a terrible job at it. To list a couple of issues:
- Your uploaded music and the YouTube collection are completely separate (unlike GPM)
- It buffers almost nothing ahead, even in bad network conditions so it fails on road trips.
- The song suggestions are awful. (way worse than GPM)
- Even if you dislike a song it will still suggest it for you (often frequently)
- A lot of features missing (sure, they wouldn't get them all, but so many are gone).
The list goes on. I was a GPM subscriber for a long time. I used to work at Google so I decided I would help beta-test YouTube Music. However it quickly became clear that it wasn't going to be a good replacement for GPM. I ended up switching away from YouTube Premium and YouTube Music.