The Google Play Music Shutdown is Happening Very Soon

In May of this year, we learned that Google Play Music wouldn’t make it out of 2020 and that the transition from it to YouTube Music was finally happening. Today, we were told the exact time frame for Google Play Music’s demise and how quickly you need to start sorting this out before you lose all of your Play Music collection.

Starting this month (August), Google will kill off music purchases through Google Play and also turn off your ability to upload music through the Music Manager. Even if you have a pre-order of an album that’s for a later date, Google will cancel that and refund you. Music purchases, they are indeed no longer a part of Google Play and the end of Music Manager means they don’t want you continuing to build your libraries on a dying service.

Once September rolls around, we’ll start to see the official shutdown of Play Music begin. Google says that users in New Zealand and South Africa will first lose access next month and that the rest of the global shutdown will start in October. This will happen on an “ongoing basis” up until December, when the whole service shuts down. There’s really no telling when your number will be called once that process begins, so you’ll want to move everything over soon.

We are hoping that Google notifies you that your time has come, because once you lose access to Google Play Music, you will have a “minimum of 30 days after losing access to Google Play Music to complete your transfer” to YouTube Music. If you fail to move everything during that period (likely by the end of 2020), you could lose it all.

At this time, you should all be able to move your libraries over to YouTube Music if you haven’t already. We have step-by-step instructions for doing so, with the process only taking a few minutes to fully complete. I recommend doing that as soon as possible, even if you aren’t sure if you plan to use YouTube Music.

To recap, music purchases through Google Play and uploads through Music Manager are ending this month. Starting next month, Google will begin killing off Play Music for users and plans to finish off every last user before the end of December 2020.

// Google Support | YouTube Blog