Google Play Music

Your music locker, repossessed

Replaced
19902026

Google Play Music was Google's music service from 2011 to 2020: a free locker for up to 50,000 of your own songs plus a Spotify-style subscription. Google retired it in stages during late 2020 in favour of YouTube Music, deleting remaining libraries in early 2021.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2011
  2. 16 November 2011 Launch
    Google Music launches

    Free 20,000-song cloud locker headlines the service.

  3. 2012
  4. 6 March 2012 Rebrand
    Becomes Google Play Music

    Folded into the new Google Play brand.

  5. 2013
  6. 15 May 2013 Feature
    All Access subscription launches

    Google enters the streaming-subscription war.

  7. 2014
  8. July 2014 Acquisition
    Songza acquired

    Contextual playlists join the service.

  9. 2018
  10. 17 May 2018 Decline
    YouTube Music relaunches

    Google signals Play Music will eventually be replaced.

  11. 2020
  12. 5 August 2020 Shutdown announced
    Retirement timeline announced

    Transfers open; purchases end within weeks.

  13. December 2020 Shutdown
    Play Music shuts down

    Streaming ends everywhere; data deletion follows in February 2021.

The site through time

Browse play.google.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2020 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Google 2011–2020 Founded Retired in favour of YouTube Music

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Google replaced Play Music with YouTube Music by December 2020, offering a one-click transfer of libraries, uploads and playlists.

Our analysis: A well-liked product killed by org chart: once Google decided music belonged to YouTube, Play Music's fate was sealed regardless of its 50,000-song locker and cleaner app. The migration preserved data but not goodwill.

History [edit]

The locker era

Google Music launched in November 2011 with a then-radical free feature: upload your own music collection, up to 20,000 songs (later 50,000), and stream it anywhere. Rebranded Google Play Music in March 2012, it added a store, and in May 2013 the All Access subscription put it head-to-head with Spotify. For Android users it was the default, competent, unglamorous home for music.

It quietly accumulated everything: purchased tracks, ripped CDs uploaded to the locker, podcasts, curated radio from the Songza acquisition. Nobody evangelised Play Music, but millions depended on it.

Handed to YouTube

YouTube relaunched YouTube Music in May 2018, and from that day Play Music was living on borrowed time; Google said as much while promising nothing would happen "soon". The end came in stages through 2020: purchases stopped in August, streaming shut off market by market from September, and by December 2020 the app was dead, with the transfer tool moving libraries, uploads and playlists to YouTube Music. In February 2021 the remaining Play Music data was deleted. The locker survived the move; the fans of the cleaner, ad-free-upload experience mostly didn't.

Similar projects

Winamp It really whips the llama's ass 1997–2013 RealPlayer Buffering… buffering… 1995–now Grooveshark All the music, none of the licences 2007–2015 Rdio The prettiest streaming service that ever lost 2010–2015 Google Reader The web, in one place 2005–2013 MSN Messenger The sound of nudges after school 1999–2014

Sources [edit]

  1. YouTube Music will replace Google Play Music by the end of 2020 YouTube (Google) 5 August 2020 [archived]
  2. Google Play Music to shut down starting in September, will disappear by December TechCrunch 5 August 2020 [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).