
Google cancels legacy Google Play Music subscriptions - rdslw
https://support.google.com/googleplay/thread/38496877
======
rdslw
To make it clear: If you were google play music subscriber, which in 2014
offered plan with lifetime guarantee of price: You've been silently cancelled
by Google :)

Upon contacting support, the only remedy they offer as for now is to subscribe
to You Tube music (higher price and no lifetime guarantee) and are
'investigating' while of course they hadnt provided any solution.

Additional info:

* you did not get ANY information about this cancellation, up to the moment people starting flooging their support which was yesterday :)

* at that moment, you probably got two cancellation mails without any usefull info

* this is Google problem/action (not known atm), not your bank or CC

Additional info v2:

* Google did NOT try to do monhtly charges for the service on the usual date, bank/CC confirms NOT a single charge attempt until, YTM resubsbription on support request.

* The problem affects probably (?) subscribers with renewal dates between April 1st and 12th (incl.) as on 13th Google noticed problems and stopped "auto-cancel-feature".

Additional info v3:

* Looks like that only some subscribers (Europeans for sure) were affected by it, so smaller impact, maybe related to country of subscriber (unknown atm)

* It was probably part of the glitched (?) and multi-steps transition of google music to youtube music services (speculation atm)

~~~
matsemann
Google maybe (?) had a better track record in 2014, but if there's one company
I wouldn't buy anything with a lifetime guarantee from now it would have to be
them.

~~~
Fjolsvith
Lifetime guarantees from companies are wishful thinking, IMHO. The company can
get bought out, go bankrupt, etc., and your guarantee is worth nothing.

~~~
onion2k
_The company can get bought out, go bankrupt, etc._

Unless I missed some big news, Google hasn't been bought out or gone bankrupt.
Those aren't relevant here. If a company offers a lifetime guarantee then it
should honor that for the lifetime of the company. Google have chosen not to
bother honoring the promise they made in the past, and they should be held to
account for that.

If you run a business and you choose to make a lifetime offer you don't get to
take that back just because you don't want to do it any more.

~~~
reaperducer
_If you run a business and you choose to make a lifetime offer you don 't get
to take that back just because you don't want to do it any more._

Tell that to Oregon Scientific, which cancelled the "lifetime" weather updates
to my weather device.

Tell that Flightradar 24, which disabled the app I paid for, and the only way
to get the functionality back is to download its new app and pay for a
subscription. If it was disclosed at the time of purchase that I could be cut
of at any time, I wouldn't have bought it.

Two stories. There are millions more on the internet.

I believe that XM radio did something similarly slimy to people who purchased
a "lifetime" subscription when the service was starting up and it needed cash.

And didn't a bunch of people get their e-books deleted when Microsoft decided
to shut down its e-book service? You think you're buying a lifetime of
reading, only to find out you were just renting the books.

~~~
onion2k
Google certainly aren't the first company to screw their users, and they won't
be the last. That doesn't make it excusable though. That just means they're as
bad as the other companies.

------
toyg
Dark pattern to "erode" an unprofitable category of users...?

"Oops, we had a technical problem and now your lifetime option is gone.
Unfortunately we have no way to create new lifetime subscriptions, because of
technical changes. As a goodwill gesture, here's a free year on
$some_other_yearly_service. Whatchagonnado, sue us for a few pennies? lolmao"

Repeat a few times until everyone _gets the memo_ or resource usage from that
category goes under "acceptable" levels of waste.

~~~
matheusmoreira
> Whatchagonnado, sue us for a few pennies? lolmao

Are courts ever gonna learn how to deal with these huge corporations? They
probably think it's cheaper to pay the fines than to obey the law and do the
right thing.

~~~
gruez
This sounds like the perfect kind of thing for class actions. Another
commenter mentioned that there's no arbitration clause so that shouldn't be an
impediment.

~~~
ashtonkem
Even with arbitration, the new pattern is to write a bot to mass file
arbitration cases. DoorDash was arguing that the thousands of arbitration
cases filed against them _in one day_ should've been converted into a class
action lawsuit. They ended up paying millions in arbitration fees alone.

------
inerg
I was affected by this as my plan was set to renew on the fourth. I was able
to contact support and get my plan going again on the discounted rate. They
ended up having to cancel my subscription and probably set some sort of flag
for me to get the discounted pricing.

All in all while it was a bit of a pain I don't think any malice was meant in
this. I'm betting they had just set the end of the renewals on the
subscription to April 2020 and figured if the service is still going they
would update the end date.

------
crazygringo
A bunch of people here are commenting about how Google is silently cancelling
a lifetime price guarantee.

But there's nothing in the thread about any lifetime guarantee, and Googling I
can't find any reference either.

Does anyone have actual evidence that Google explicitly made a lifetime price
guarantee? It just seems... unusual, not something subscription services
generally do.

Also, this seems like more of a bug affecting some users, as opposed to
intended policy. I mean, when Google cancels things, it usually provides
months/years of advance notice with lots of e-mails.

So I'm hesitant to jump in with my pitchfork here...

~~~
josteink
> A bunch of people here are commenting about how Google is silently
> cancelling a lifetime price guarantee.

Early adopters were promised a fixed, _permanently rebated_ price for signing
up.

I remember. I was one who took the offer (but later cancelled for other
reasons).

~~~
crazygringo
Do you have the original e-mail or anything you could paste here?

I'm actually really curious to see the exact wording and fine print/TOS. Just
because that's such a rare thing to do, above all by a large company, and I'm
surprised it would have passed legal review, but the devil is often in the
details.

~~~
josteink
I went looking, but I can’t find it now. Sorry.

~~~
Lammy
[https://www.androidpolice.com/2015/10/23/if-you-currently-
ha...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2015/10/23/if-you-currently-have-the-
discounted-play-music-plan-7-99-you-get-to-keep-that-rate-when-you-convert-to-
youtube-red/)

------
dschuetz
It's ironic how short a "lifetime" can be on the Internet.

~~~
Upvoter33
it was a lifetime subscription. it just wasn't _your_ lifetime.

~~~
tommysavaria
It seems to be that they are looking to phase out Play Music in favor of
Youtube Music. If that is the case, then those « lifetime » subscriptions
meant that if was good for the lifetime of the service, and that is coming to
an end soon.

If they shutdown Play Music, it might look similar to the end of Google Reader
in 2013. They might be looking to get people off the service until they
announce it.

~~~
jermeh
That's not an "if" situation. They've been very public about migrating to the
Youtube Music platform for a couple years now.

~~~
toyg
Why are these companies obsessed with unifying their brands and capabilities?

You can buy dozens of different shampoo brands (because you like the bottle of
this or the smell of that) and in the end your money will end up flowing to
the same company; but $deity forbid that I could get two same-but-different
services from the same company if they can avoid it. I mean, I get the
operational savings etc etc, but if they are both profitable, why go through
the pain and suffering of killing one?

Then you turn to another niche (like IM) and it's the opposite attitude.

Google's commercial strategies are pretty nonsensical.

------
jhoechtl
I will ditch Google Music for Youtube Music the moment they allow me to upload
my MP3-collection. Any ETA on that or even plans to implement that?

If not, is there any other free service where I could upload my MP3 collection
to, with an app for mobile which would sync the data between mobile devices?

On Youtube Google nags me since months (a year?) to switch to Youtube Music
but I get less service there. I fear the moment I hastily tap to try and loose
Google Music.

~~~
paulcole
> the moment they allow me to upload my MP3-collection

I would not hold your breath for this. The holdover MP3 collector is such a
small minority that no mainstream company is going to consider them from here
on out.

> is there any other free service where I could upload my MP3 collection to

If there was, why would you waste your time? Either it's not going to be free
or it's going to disappear.

~~~
CedarMadness
The problem is that some bands were never signed to a label, broke up before
spotify got big, or for some other reason don't exist on any of the popular
streaming sites. The problem is getting smaller as time goes on, but it still
exists. I can self-host something like Ampache or Plex or something, but then
I don't get any sort of discovery features, and I have to go to a totally
different platform to listen to new artists.

GPM was nice in that it merged the cloud music with your own collection, but
I'm pretty resigned to the fact that I'm going to lose that functionality when
they finally shut it down.

~~~
paulcole
> The problem is that some bands were never signed to a label, broke up before
> spotify got big, or for some other reason don't exist on any of the popular
> streaming sites.

For Spotify, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. that's not a problem.

Are people going to cancel their accounts because they can't listen to a very
small subset of music? Probably but it's going to be a tiny minority of users
that's inconsequential to their bottom line.

------
option_greek
Google's payment options page is one of the worst designs I have ever seen. A
simple task like removing and adding an expired CC will make you wish you were
never born. Their support basically is a loop of templated responses with Zero
attempt at solving any issues (My guess is all google support agents are just
bots).

------
oftenwrong
Google Music is probably just following the typical path of a Google service:

1\. Create something new in a given category and hype it up.

2\. If it fails to catch on massively, neglect it. Make only minor changes,
while competitors are continuously improving their offerings.

3\. Leave that old service to rot until you decide to shut it down. Meanwhile,
start over from step 1 with different branding.

I can't say this is a poor strategy for a company like Google.

~~~
mattkevan
Seems like all the people in charge at Microsoft in the 2000s have moved over
to Google, as the product strategy seems the same – create something, watch it
fail, kill it, hastily rebrand the old thing as a new thing and repeat.

E.g. MSN Music/Zune Marketplace/XBox Music/Microsoft Store/Groove Music

------
bestnameever
My subscription is still active and is due to renew today. I will let everyone
know what happens.

fyi nobody is complaining about this on the youtubemusic reddit which is the
one of the first places I think we would hear about it if this issue was
widespread BUT maybe its regional and hasn't hit the usa users yet.

~~~
bobo_legos
Mine renews on the 14th and the payment was already made last night.
Everything I look at shows my sub. is still active. I'm one of the original
7.99 subscribers.

The death of Google Music is long awaited and feared. Once it does die it'll
be like the death of Google Reader 2.0. People are just getting twitchy with
any little mistake Google makes.

~~~
bestnameever
Day 1 subscriber here as well. One thing that is interesting is that both
youtube and youtube music show a price of $9.99 but once I click the manage
button it displays the $7.99 price through google play music.

Honestly, I'll be pretty bummed if they increase the prices. I stopped using
youtube music / google play music awhile back as they ruined the experience
for me there but have kept it for the ad free youtube.

------
abraham
> Google responded to our inquiry to confirm that they are aware of the issue
> and working on fixing it.

[https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-
music-s...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-music-
subscriptions-are-failing-to-auto-renew-for-some/)

~~~
Lammy
Is it weird that the same site published this on the same day?
[https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-
music-t...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-music-to-
youtube-music-making-the-switch/)

Very strangely authoritarian wording, too:

"It comes down to preference, but soon, you'll have no other choice but
switching"

"Unfortunately, the equation isn't that simple here because YouTube Music will
replace Google Play Music one day. You have to accept YouTube Music's quirks
if you currently use and love Play Music, or you have to switch to another
platform altogether."

------
mangoman
I subscribed in 2016 when they were doing a special - $7.99/mo lifetime
including youtube premium. My subscription does not seem to be affected yet,
although my renewal date is April 22nd, so I guess we'll see what happens on
that day.

Honestly I've been thinking about moving to spotify, but the youtube ad-free
premium has kept me on google play music because it's just not worth it to
switch. But Google Play Music has not been updated in what feels like ages.
And the iOS client is terrible (I only switched in the last 6 months).

Seems like they're getting ready to pull the plug. I subscribed in Oct 2016,
and over that time I've saved $2/mo on equivalent music subscriptions and had
youtube premium included (yeah yeah I know adblock or pihole or nextdns
negates the value, but it's nice to be able to use the youtube client on my
phone without needing to set up those solutions). Net value has been $83
though I've paid for it with a drastically sub par music experience (sharing
is pointless, can't see what my friends listen to, playlist management is
terrible).

~~~
jpdb
> youtube ad-free premium has kept me on google play music

I've been a subscriber since 2016 as well and this is as well as music uploads
is what has kept me on Google Play music. YouTube music has this functionality
now, but it still lacks a proper library feature as well as a migration option
for existing library's and uploads.

Spotify just does everything so much better, so I'm so close to moving.

------
tomrod
SaaS and lifetime subscriptions don't play well together.

~~~
ghaff
Of course, lifetime upgrades of licensed software didn't really either. They
didn't go away immediately with a canceled service, but in most cases they
still end up breaking with OS upgrades, new devices, etc.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
The difference being, upgrading the OS was your decision. You still had a
license for something that worked on a dated version of the OS, if you so
chose.

This is out of your control.

~~~
ghaff
Kinda sorta. Security patches. There's other software you want to upgrade
that's only supported on newer OSs. Your hardware breaks and the replacement
hardware needs a newer OS.

Yes, it's possible (and organizations with specialized needs do) keep running
15 year old software and hardware without changing anything. But, for ordinary
people, that app you bought is going to break at some point in the absence of
updates. Of course, it's a bigger problem with SaaS and you have less control
over it but licensed software is not immune.

------
OrangeMango
I personally never trust anything that says lifetime guarantee. It just can't
happen except in very unusual circumstances.

I do have an anecdote that disproves my theory, however. My grandmother used
to be an AT&T telephone operator, before they were broken up. As a retiree,
she has "free lifetime AT&T", which they have been honoring even as the new
company is not the company she retired from. She literally dials 0 and asks
the person to connect her call for her. It costs her nothing.

~~~
bainsfather
My father bought a lifetime subscription to the uk magazine 'Private Eye' in,
iirc, the 1970s, for £10 (they were being sued and on the verge of going
bust).

He still gets his copy delivered every fortnight.

------
robkop
Does anyone have an easy way of exporting playlists/ liked songs out of google
play music into some generic format (is there even a generic format for this
kind of data)?

Currently getting really tired of google play music but I really dislike what
Spotify is doing with postcasts so it feels like I'm stuck between a rock and
a hard place on android.

~~~
modsWork4appl
Current plan is to write a Python script that takes screenshots every 1
second, and I'll tab through my huge playlist.

Then later I'll scrape those photos for text.

~~~
mceachen
If you open your network tab in your browser's devtools, there may be JSON
payloads to give you what you need (rather than farting around with OCR or
reverse image searching your album art).

~~~
modsWork4appl
No luck.

But I did make that python program to take photos. 64 images to scrape one
day. I'm not too concerned of the difficulty of OCR, there's gotta be some
libraries for it, especially on black and white text from a web page.

(I did OCR with cellphone pictures and it worked)

------
zelphirkalt
Google is just following the law: Like in law, where a life-long sentence does
not necessarily mean life-long, at Google lifetime guarantee does not mean
lifetime. Perhaps guarantee, but not lifetime.

(Don't take this too seriously, especially not from me.)

------
ashtonkem
I know it's a bad trope at this point, but you really have to assume that
Google will change anything on you. They're just not a consistent or good
faith company to operate with, even compared to other companies in this space.

------
franciscop
I remember my friend complaining that the same happened with the GameMaker
community few years back; there was a lifetime with all future major and minor
version updates included, but then boom no longer applicable after few months:

Src: [https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/why-do-i-
have-...](https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/why-do-i-have-to-pay-
to-upgrade-my-license.24162/#post-152842)

------
bobblywobbles
For as much as we rely on their services and look to Google for advice on best
practices and guidelines, time and time again services are simply dropped.

On one hand, yes as a company I imagine you sneak some sneaky verbiage in the
ToS so that you can't back yourself into a corner you can't get out of, but
offering a lifetime subscription and it just being canceled - I just can't
trust Google anymore to keep services up they "promise" will be there.

------
maxdo
This is the last drop. They ditched the google music in favor of half baked
youtube music, with no playlist import, horrible offline support, tons of bugs
that still there. I heard they are big somewhere in India. Well... good luck.
I'm done and switching to Spotify. The only reason I was attracted by this
terrible service was pricing. I subscribe from my country of origin at ~2
USD/mo subscription. For that price, I was ok with their quality.

------
everdrive
Again, never subscribe to a service assuming the terms won't change or be
removed. Never assume that you 'own' anything that lives in, or relies on a
company's cloud. This doesn't mean that services are bad, but they should be
seen as ephemeral.

------
catacombs
Never buy anything from Google.

~~~
modsWork4appl
I've added Google to my Don't buy list.

It's - Apple, Samsung, Google

------
Gravityloss
Hmm. So I bought an album and a few songs there. They're apparently gone and I
get some flow asking for credit card details. Apparently trying to sign me in
for google music?

Well, I had moved on to Spotify anyway.

~~~
Gravityloss
Seems also the few movies I bought are gone. But they still sell them? That's
certainly an interesting way of doing business.

This is one of the movies I had bought. I could again "buy" it. Wonder who
will fall for that for the second time...
[https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Kong_Skull_Isla...](https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Kong_Skull_Island?id=qUD8xPGIbDQ)

~~~
Gravityloss
Ok, all the movies are back there now! Might have been user error on them some
temporary issue.

The music is also there but it just switches your user so you have to re-login
with the correct user after going to the music menu...

------
jamisteven
Does this mean we can get Songza back? Was pretty bummed out when google
acquired them, really enjoyed that music app although Spotify basically has
the same functionality now.

------
outside1234
Sort of like the lifetime guarantee that GCP claims to offer (until next year
when it's shut down).

It's sort of nuts to think anything Google does is going to be around in 5
years.

------
zmk_
Reminds me how Google "upgraded" me to a better price when I moved from the
Netherlands to Sweden. When I complained to them I got 3 months "free trial".

------
puppyprogram
I was not on legacy but canceled my family plan anyway in solidarity. I guess
back to piracy for me

------
ecmascript
If you use adblocker, music.youtube.com is free and without any ads. At least
for me.

~~~
userbinator
Especially for music, piracy has always been the easier route.

------
dbg31415
Customer support, especially from Google, has been abysmal during Covid.

I called a co-worker, and the number looked like a normal US number... Nope,
it was a Canadian number, and AT&T charged me like $60 for a 30 minute call.
Fuck that, it's the same country code.

So I made the switch to Google Fi.

I called Google Fi in advance, and asked how it would work with my Google
Voice number.

The support person said, "Yeah, you can't have the two kinds of Google numbers
on the same email, but just make a new Google account and set you Google Fi
number up under there, then forward your Google Voice number like you've been
doing."

Cool, easy.

I do that.

Mind you my whole family is on the plan, Mom, Dad, sister... and it's a big
deal to switch.

After the SIM cards were sent, I go to set my Google Voice number to forward.
And it doesn't work. It tells me I can't forward a Google Voice number to a
Google Fi phone. WTF.

Then Covid hits.

All of my work and emergency contact numnbers are routed through my Google
Voice number, which I can inexplicably no longer forward to my phone.

Google support lines are just playing recordings, "Not available."

Live chat... oof, 40 minutes to have what should have been a 2 minute
conversation. And it's either a bot, or someone just copying a script. It was
horrible. And I had to try like 4 times. Hours wasted.

Email support was worse. Nobody pays attention to context. Like they just go
until they see a keyword they recognize and paste in a response template.

I've got Google Voice to forward to my emails... so all my calls and texts
were still sort of coming in. But I wanted to get it sorted with Google.

I spell out a plan, email and ask them if it'll work.

They say over email it will.

I'm going to just drop my cell phone number and just use my Google Voice
number on my cell. Easier than trying to update every place that had the old
number. Oof. Then I'll switch the ownership from my Fake Google account to my
Real Google account and turn off the Fake Google account line.

Plan was signed off on by Google staff. Cool, I feel like it'll work.

I get the new sim card, and it sort of works... except the fake Google account
I used to set up the plan in the first place has to stay the owner. I can't
change my real Google account to the owner on the family plan, I can't change
anyone to the owner on the family plan. So I'm stuck paying for an extra line.

Google's solution... "Just drop the family plan." No joke. Just kick everyone
off onto their own plan, problem solved. I got 3 email templates telling me to
do this -- that's how they want me to change the owner of the family plan.

Oof. None of this will will kill me, and I'm glad they are keeping their
employees safe... but none of this experience will ever put me in a spot to
use Google again if I can avoid it. Their support is worse than any I've ever
experienced.

Response times suck, lack of training for their staff, lack of intelligence
around how to solve problems... it just feels like I'm talking to bots whose
first language wasn't English.

Anyway totally frustrating experience, and it makes no sense. Why can't I
forward a Google Voice number to a Google Fi phone? Shit like that is beyond
me. And even with limiting product design, why wasn't Google Staff trained on
that so they could give me proper advice when I first called?

I was a huge Google Fiber fan, and I wanted to like Google Fi... but man...
it's been such a hassle. I've got a 100+ response email thread now and it's
all just missing the context copy / paste talk, or them ignoring the question
and answering something else, or contradicting advice one person to the next.
Oof.

------
Semaphor
The title does not seem to fit what’s behind the link? I see people
complaining about google canceling ongoing subscriptions after failing to
collect the payments, presumably because of some fuckup on Google’s payment
processing end.

------
modsWork4appl
Are they going to carry over my playlists?

I don't mind a price change, the government printed a lot of money. But I have
hundreds of songs in a playlist.

