Android moves to replace Google Play music app with YouTube Music

Google wants to make YouTube the default audio app on Android in the hope of boosting its chances of competing with Spotify.

Right now the default Android audio app is Google Play Music, which does try to get users to upgrade to Google’s subscription streaming service, but doesn’t do a very good job of it and is mainly used as the interface for accessing locally stored audio files. Rather than overhaul the way that upsell is managed Google has decided to merge it with the YouTube Music app.

Music videos are arguably the most popular type of content on YouTube, with the top 30 most viewed individual videos dominated by music. YouTube monetizes those via serving ads on the video, but it would rather people paid upfront to its premium subscription service, that offers ad-free playback, background play on mobile devices (without it the music disappears if you switch to another app) and even downloading.

YouTube premium has plenty of features, but Spotify is the incumbent streaming music service, so Google has to do something special to topple it. As politicians, regulators and anti-trust authorities around the world are increasingly sensitive to, in Android Google has an incredible powerful platform for upselling its other digital products and services and it seems to have decided YouTube Premium needs the power of Android to give it critical mass.

YouTube Music is your personal guide through the complete world of music—whether it’s a hot new song, hard to find gem, or an unmissable music video,” says the announcement, tellingly published on the YouTube blog. “Music fans on Android phones can now easily unlock the magic of YouTube Music, which will come installed on all new devices launching with Android 10 (and Android 9), including the Pixel series.”

The announcement also made it clear that Google Play Music will no longer be preinstalled, which seems like a precursor to it being replaced entirely. You can still access locally stored files through YouTube Music, but on first inspection the user interface is inferior to Google Play Music, so the company may face some push-back from users on that. We’ll leave you with the top 5 music videos ever on YouTube, bafflingly headed by the entirely mundane Despacito. Contrastingly Gangnam Style has lost none of its kitsch, tongue-in-cheek charm.