GPM was dope, no two ways about it. I was sad when it closed.
But after moving over to YTM and using it for years, I like the change. It lets me stream music, just like GPM. It lets me play local files and put them in playlists just like GPM. And it lets me put more underground music on my playlists that are uploaded to YouTube, unlike GPM.
The UI and everything you interact with is way better than GPM too.
Not trying to be a Google shill, but I actually love YTM. Podcasts coming just combines two apps I used into one.
I 100% understand what you mean. I still have a hard time trusting Google with their services and host my own RSS reader (TT-RSS) and music (Plex & Plexamp), but I do use YTM for finding new music as well as backing up my personal music like I did with GPM. Not a shill either, but YTM is not a bad product.
I never really used their Podcast app as I assumed it would be closed at some point (and here we are) and really enjoy Pocket Casts. If that ever shuts down, I'll just use GPodder and roll my own hosting for yet another service. I guess in the end, Google has taught me to be self reliant lol
2 reasons, but the main one is that they had to get separate individual licenses for songs or something and that was likely minimally cutting into their absolutely insane profits, but with YouTube music it's still just YouTube so only one is needed.. idk that's what I read on Reddit a couple years ago. The other is that their workplace culture is completely fucked and they push new apps instead of updating the old ones.
I'm not saying they should be like apple but sometimes seeing the killed by google list grow is frustrating when you look back and were an active user of a bunch of the things
I think you underestimate how expensive licensing music is. As an example, the vast majority of Spotify's revenue goes to paying licensing fees and is most of the reason they're wildly unprofitable