YouTube Music app garners lots of 1-star Play Store ratings, but all is not lost for Google

Google recently deprecated their old and reliable Google Play Music service. The platform was launched on November 2011 and had since garnered over 5 billion downloads on the Google Play Store over its decade long lifetime.

Sadly, all good things come to an end, and the service has recently been replaced by Google’s YouTube Music that was launched in 2018.

This did not come as a shock, however, as GPM had began to show its age with its horribly dated interface that screamed for updates. Google had other plans though, and left it as it was.

Moreover, Google Play Music app had been notifying users to migrate their library to YouTube Music for several months prior to its complete shut down.

And the inevitable finally happened last month when users began to see the following upon opening up the Google Play Music app.

Google had finally axed the service for good. Or did it? The recent reviews for the YouTube Music app on Google Play Store suggest a different story.

Thousands of die-hard Google Play Music users have left 1-star ratings on YouTube Music’s Play Store page. The resultant is a greater number of 1-star ratings than the 5-star ones.

As of the time of the writing of this piece, Google’s latest music service has hit a far lower than satisfactory rating of 2.9. Users are clearly unhappy. And it shows.

Shouldn’t have tried to fix what’s not broken…loved GPM
Source

There have already been a slew of complaints on the service’s official forums regarding several issues like missing songs, no cast option on desktop, and problems when loading files from device storage.

However, it is important to understand here that the app is quite new, and all good things take time. There’s also plenty of positives in the YouTube Music app, starting with the fact that music is mostly available for free.

YouTube Music also offers unique features that are missing on other competing apps like Spotify. One of them is the option is to stream music videos. The app also offers seamless playlist synchronization with the main YouTube service.

It is worth noting though, that these complaints originate mostly from Android users. iOS users seem to be receiving the app quite well. Or, it could just be that the app isn’t that buggy on iOS.

Another obvious reason for YouTube Music 1-star ratings is the fact that almost all Google Play Music users are limited to Android. They alone were the ones that were forcefully moved onto YouTube Music from GPM.

And their frustration has led to bad reviews on the Google Play Store.

All is not lost for Google though, as YouTube Music’s rating on the Apple App Store stands at 4.7, which is commendable.

This further indicates that the wave of bad ratings are due to a buggy app on Android, hiccups during The Great Google Play Music Migration of 2020, and users who simply do not like the app.

This wave will pass eventually, as more former GPM users get used to the new app, and as Google releases new updates to fix bugs and further refine the experience.

Also, new users are being added to YouTube Music’s total number of downloads as we speak, and they are bound to like the app. Well, at least most of them.

That being said, let us know about your thoughts regarding YouTube Music 1-star ratings in the comments below.

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