Don't be evil......

crunchman

Axe_meister said:

Ok I will come to Google defence given I work for them. At the end of the day this was a business decision. Google play music did not get any traction and YouTube was the bigger brand, why have two teams working on what is essentially two product doing the same thing.
Google is far from Evil, if anything it can be far too woke.
It is recently offset all of it's carbon emissions with a goal of being carbon free by 2030, with massive investment in green energy and energy efficiency.
I've worked for big evil corporations and the difference is massive.

Sorry, the way it was done was indefensible.  I was encouraged to move over, despite the fact that my daughter would lose access.  There was no warning that she would lose access.  They are taking away a service that I have paid for without any warning.

If you are going to kill off Google Play Music, then at least make sure the thing you are moving to has the same functionality.  If they had put their minds to it, then they could have written code for Youtube music to work with Family Link Manager so that families could retain their access.

It might be a "business decision" but it is not an ethical one.  It's just wrong.

I didn't know about the issue that @Kittyfrisk linked to above either.  That's even worse.

Google might be slightly less evil than Amazon and Apple, but what they have done is wrong and indefensible.

Axe_meister

Have you contacted Google? Logged a complaint?
You are buying a service that is subject to change.
A subscription service at that. Could have been any other company that withdraw it's app from the public.
Likewise Spotify could turn around and say it's getting rid of it's family service at any time if it was not making money.
If you had paid upfront for the year it may be another matter.
I could say the same about Microsoft taking away the ability to play DVDs in Windows 10 and I paid the full upgrade fee.
This has nothing to do with evil or morality. An app was closed down with an alternate on offer that unfortunately does not meet your needs.

crunchman

Axe_meister said:

Have you contacted Google? Logged a complaint?
You are buying a service that is subject to change.
A subscription service at that. Could have been any other company that withdraw it's app from the public.
Likewise Spotify could turn around and say it's getting rid of it's family service at any time if it was not making money.
If you had paid upfront for the year it may be another matter.
I could say the same about Microsoft taking away the ability to play DVDs in Windows 10 and I paid the full upgrade fee.
This has nothing to do with evil or morality. An app was closed down with an alternate on offer that unfortunately does not meet your needs.

I had a chat with someone on the Google "support" team on Friday.  There were vague promises that their developers were looking into this, but no commitment to actually fix it.  They were just trying to fob me off.

When I was "encouraged" to move over to YouTube Music, it should have been explained to me  that I would be losing functionality.  I would have stayed on the Google Play Music until it shut down.  As it is, I have been told I can't go back even though it is still operational for the moment.

I will vote with my feet and go back to Spotify.  I would have done that on principle anyway given the way Google have acted, but now that Spotify have now released Spotify kids it's an absolute no brainer.

You have been silent on the issue that kittyfrisk raised.  That's even worse.  People have spent good money on hardware that will now be useless.  That's in Apple kind of territory.

That's before we get into all the dodgy tracking you around the internet with their searches.  I now use Duck Duck Go as my default search engine.

These big internet corporations need to be split up.  The Search side of Google should be split from YouTube, and both should be split from the Android OS.  Amazon and Facebook should be split up as well.  The power Google, Amazon and Facebook have at the moment is not good at all.

Axe_meister

On the kittyfisk issue, you can play your own music locally, you are paying for the portal service they are offering. If it's not the right product go elsewhere. I don't complain to Fender because my Strat doesn't sound like a Les Paul.

Kittyfrisk

"On the kittyfisk issue"
Whoa, now I'm 'an issue', just for pointing to a link relating to the OP's situation?
Well excuse me.

ewal

I'm another long time Google Music subscriber really struggling to get on with YouTube Music. I especially dislike the Music Library split between uploads and albums I've added from service. Also find the navigation is not intuitive, if you want to search for an artist then play an album.

Think I might switch to Bandcamp and forget about streaming services. The other advantage is I might value music more if I'm paying per album.

Funkfingers

I am not certain that it is possible to be evil. It is very definitely possible to do evil. 

Cranky

Axe_meister said:

Have you contacted Google? Logged a complaint?
You are buying a service that is subject to change.
A subscription service at that. Could have been any other company that withdraw it's app from the public.
Likewise Spotify could turn around and say it's getting rid of it's family service at any time if it was not making money.
If you had paid upfront for the year it may be another matter.
I could say the same about Microsoft taking away the ability to play DVDs in Windows 10 and I paid the full upgrade fee.
This has nothing to do with evil or morality. An app was closed down with an alternate on offer that unfortunately does not meet your needs.

Google hosed any parent who enjoyed their parental controls once upon a time.  Now you have to buy a chromebook if you want to set proper restrictions.  They rope you in and then stick it to you.

With YT music, streamlining it with Google Play makes sense, but the YT interface alone betrays the fact that they're exploiting the preexisting Play users in order to compete with other streaming services.  Those of us who use Play just for a cloud library were obviously considered expendable.

The basic annoyance is that the "end user" is just a walking data mine and ad target.  Every business decision leads to that, and it's spyware.  Google, Microsoft, Apple, they all do it.  And they force you to overhaul your hardware to either switch your loyalties or keep up with their planned obsolescence.  I hate putting the kids into that environment.  And I just wanna buy a friggin product without having to contribute to the World Brain with every keystroke.

For streaming, Pandora is still the way to go if you want to avoid invasive software.

RandallFlagg

Overnight the Apple share price went up 6% and Alphabet close to 4%. Happy shareholders all round. 

Keep up them evil subscriptions chaps.

fields5069

The only way to not do evil is probably either:

a) play everything on teh vinyl
b) pony up for a service with a subscription fee which reflects what you're actually getting - a huge chunk of the recorded music catalogue.

One of the problems with b) is that you will never listen to all that music, and nor would you want to. A solution may be the ability to stream snippets of music, with a limit on the number of tracks you choose to listen to in their entirety per month, the majority of your subscription fee going to reimburse the latter. Maybe an option to amass a permanent listening library, so you can add x albums per month to that library. I'd probably go for a model based on the latter, it's pretty much the way I collected music. The advantage is that the digital age hopefully enables proper reimbursement to go to the artist, at a cut price to the consumer. Then again, my daughter is voraciously listening to anything and everything she can, from deep Radiohead to covers of Tatu, so she would benefit from some sort of "radio" option.

I'm sure there are flaws here, and if it hasn't been tried then there is a good reason for that I'm sure.

Cranky

https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/17/21520315/microsoft-install-office-pwa-web-app-without-permission-update-word-powerpoint-excel

WiresDreamDisasters

Cranky said:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/17/21520315/microsoft-install-office-pwa-web-app-without-permission-update-word-powerpoint-excel

I really hate all of this wank. I own my fucking computer! Not Apple! And Not Microcock!

Keefy

I am reminded of the words of the Buddha that have resounded down the centuries: DON’T BE A CUNT!

Cranky

Was just listening to Dark Side of the Moon via YT Music, an album that I personally own and have uploaded to my account and then downloaded to my own phone.  I'm listening to my downloaded album.

An advertisement came on after Breathe.  And several more throughout.

I. Hate. These. Companies.

Evil

Snags

And this is why I buy everything I want, rip it, shove it on a NAS that acts as a media server, and stream from there. 

crunchman

Cranky said:

Was just listening to Dark Side of the Moon via YT Music, an album that I personally own and have uploaded to my account and then downloaded to my own phone.  I'm listening to my downloaded album.

An advertisement came on after Breathe.  And several more throughout.

I. Hate. These. Companies.

Evil

The MP3s of stuff I own are on the micro SD card on my phone. You can always use a different player.

vasselmeyer

I was a Google Play Music user and I'm not moving over to YT Music. I hate the way that your music listening bleeds into normal YT.

Luckily, I still buy CDs but just rip them to sound files and I uploaded them to Play Music, so I could play them from the cloud. Now all of my music is on my private Plex server and I can play them anywhere as long as I have an Internet connection and a Plex app.

crunchman

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/oct/20/us-justice-department-antitrust-lawsuit-against-google

Cranky

crunchman said:

Cranky said:

Was just listening to Dark Side of the Moon via YT Music, an album that I personally own and have uploaded to my account and then downloaded to my own phone.  I'm listening to my downloaded album.

An advertisement came on after Breathe.  And several more throughout.

I. Hate. These. Companies.

Evil

The MP3s of stuff I own are on the micro SD card on my phone. You can always use a different player.

Yeah, I have expandable memory (400 gb) on the phone full of flac files.  I just haven't got everything on it yet.

Funny thing is, after going thru all the trouble of installing YT Music as prompted, transferring all my uploads, and then uninstalling YT Music out of frustration, my Google Play app is still there and working exactly as it was all along.