For a year we knew that Google was pulling the plug on Google Play Music, and the official announcement of the same came in October. Now the service is officially dead for all the users.
The webpage music.google.com shows a notification that Google Play Music is no longer available and there is a button to transfer your music to YouTube Music. On opening the Play Music app, it greets you with a transition animation where the Google Play Music icon transitions into the YouTube Music logo.
The website and the phone app of Google Play Music show the same options when logged in, the app redirects you to the webpage. You have the option to download your music library, delete your recommendation history, and delete your music library.
This seems to be the final move from Google as after transferring your data or downloading it, the app widget should disappear from your home screen. Google notes that if the user does not download their data all the data will be automatically deleted once the shutdown is complete.
The users have until the end of December 2020 to download and transfer their data to YouTube Music. In 2021, users will not have any option to download or transfer their library. The catch here comes that Google has not yet provided an option to delete the locally stored music on the Google Play Music app. As you can no longer access the app’s interface the only option to free up space is to delete the app or to clear the storage from settings.
Nonetheless, Google has been enhancing the experience of Youtube Music to cater to those migrating from Google Play Music.