Google Play is disappearing… Download your music while you still can!

Man Facing away wearing headphones

Please note, Google Play Music is no longer available. This article is here for legacy purposes.

Google is known for starting projects publicly and then ending them without much fanfare. Google Plus, Google TV Fiber, and many others got canned and now even Google’s streaming gaming service Stadia is headed for the Google Graveyard. It’s getting crowded in there! But with so many big companies like Apple, Amazon and even Sony having a music store as a corner stone of their respective media empires, it’s a shock that Google is going to drop Google Play Music.

Yikes! Did you get an email like this? We didn’t until we went to the Google Play Music site.

Better hurry, February 24th, 2021 is the deadline for you to head over to Google Play Music and download your purchases. The process is pretty straight forward: Log in with your google account, then click “Download Your Music Library”. The site will walk you through the steps to get your tracks.

Image of google play music's transfer site
Manage your Google Play Music library before it’s too late!

You can also click the big blue “Transfer to YouTube music” if you’re interested and setting that up going forward. We transferred ours and got a message that said it could take up to 24 hours, but it only took a few minutes. Be warned, that the transferred music seemed a little hidden. It is seen as an “upload”, not as standard YouTube Music. You can find it if you click the “YouTube Music” drop down under albums or other sections in the site’s “Library” section.

Arrow pointing to Upload option in the YouTube Music dropdown in the Albums section of the YouTube Music Library page.
Seems the music licenses don’t transfer over, just the files.

Let’s hope YouTube Music doesn’t end up in the Google Graveyard like YouTube Gaming and YouTube Messages did!