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P. 8
The Day the
Music App Died
Google's Play Music app is gone on some Android devices, and soon will be completely gone
By John Krout
INTRODUCTION There are three reasons why that cloud
storage approach is not ideal for me.
I am a music collector. I have a large
collection of audio CDs; roughly First, that network-intensive method is a
1,600 songs are on the micro-SD classic way for a dedicated fan of music
card in my Samsung Galaxy S10 to run into the ceiling on cell network
phone. I bought that phone in late data usage very quickly each month,
2019, and my carrier recently upgrad- with financial penalties for exceeding
ed the phone’s Android OS to version the ceiling, if your carrier contract has
11. such a limit.
I started my Android experience on a Second, despite claims that music
Galaxy S5 phone, which I still own. stored in the cloud is available wherever
That phone runs Android 6. I also you go, there are vast stretches of the
own two Galaxy tablets, a recently US where data service is minimal or is
purchased S5e running Android 10, completely absent. Drive through any
and a much older A model running mountainous area and that becomes
Android 8.1.0. obvious very quickly. With 5G, which has a much
shorter range than 4G, that problem will be even
On February 1, 2021, I started the Play Music app more acute. The mountains will be the last place car-
on my Galaxy Tab S5e. The app displayed a screen riers build the extra towers necessary to make 5G
stating that Play Music is "no longer available". The work on every mile of interstates. Don’t count on that
same announcement recommended installing the to happen on other mountain highways in the next
YouTube Music app. ten years.
You can see that screen in Illustration 1. Third, there is a privacy issue. Music stored and ac-
cessed in the cloud is an invitation for the cloud stor-
age provider to learn about one’s music preferences
and monetize that knowledge, such as through end-
less ads.
WHAT GOOGLE DECIDED TO DO
I went to my desktop computer and googled the sta-
tus of the Play Music app. I learned that, in 2020,
Google announced that the company would no long-
er support the app as of December 3, 2020.
WHY I WON’T USE THE YOUTUBE MUSIC APP
That end of support, by itself, does not cause the
YouTube is owned by Google. The intent of the app to stop working. I use the Play Music app daily
YouTube music app is to play music stored "in the (Continued on page 9)
cloud".
June 2021 8
