1) streams are of FAR lower and more variable quality
2) Some of the weird and wonderful music that was on Google Music is nonexistent on YouTube
3) COPYRIGHT STRIKES from YouTube videos apply to your music library(!?)
The whole transition is a horrible idea, and I wish they would have canned it.
Starting or joining new teams and inventing products "resolving" the exact same problem in order to get noticed and climb the corporate ladder to a Google Fellowship.
How about fixing the stuff you got ???.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_music_loc... only lists a few alternatives and a lot of defunct services like Amazon and Microsoft’s shutdown cloud player and Groove Music...
Also, all these little notes that I have put on some tracks here and there will be gone.
Someone in a high ranks of Google should take a clue, and once and for all say "stop it" with this "old bad, new good" madness. I have had quite a confidence loss in Google as a brand after Google Reader's demise, and nothing so far has improved it. Pixel 4 discontinued after 9 months?
Their brand lost so much confidence, that this is now to the point that at couple of different meetings over new tech directions, one of the common points brought against GCP and Go was that "This tech is from Google. We don't know if we can put a 10 years plan based on these technologies, given the Google's graveyard expansion rate".
The standard Google shutdown gives you maybe a monta to rescue all your data before it vanishes into the abyss.
Spotify isn't bad, overall. The curated playlists seem better than Google's, and the auto-generated ones (Daily Mixes, Weekly Discover, etc) are solid. Music availability seems to be about the same, although I'm not into super obscure stuff so YMMV. The UI is a bit worse (can't scroll back in the currently playing playlist, Car Mode is really bad), and default streaming quality is subpar (but can be fixed in settings). I like the frictionless switching to different devices. Overall I'm happy.
Spotify is annoying because the radio stations are garbage & I can't (or haven't yet figured out how to) downvote music.