Lots of things,

- playlist decayed and dropped songs, YouTube is even worse about this

- Play Music had a new releases browser highlighting new album releases by genre, you could "walk" into them in AA, then they bled that off

- as it stands "Play" doesnt have music anymore, and so the only discovery is YouTube's recommendations

- YouTube's recommendations are somehow difficult to control, overly gamed, repetitive, coarse, and generic -- some of which are contradictory. Google wasn't even able to protect Gboard from exploits like this with their unsated thirst for big data automation dominance

- they haven't begun to cooperate with other vendors to operate with assistant, instead picking winners, again

- for a span battery was concerning, it's not right now

- for a span Google's failed record of protecting user privacy, even now Google+ echo's when the Photos flow Share workflow walks me into privacy violating features

- i have qualms about providing an ad personalization business real-time granular data about my mood (though it's unlikely since my tastes are too obscure, anyway)

- i have qualms about subjecting myself to the opinions of a business with large enough reach to be an effective political entity and lever of corporate activism against my neighbors in society (particularly for an inferior product)

Hope this helps.

Edit: also the playback history was pretty bad IIRC, I assume it lumps audio playback with shorts, and shorts can't be organized into playlist despite their efforts. I need music to be a commodity, not a gift/promise.

Interesting, that's what I was wondering exactly, thanks for the context.

I think the main difference between our experiences is stemming from the "Play" garden.

when I was on android, I didn't care that the Play experience was being "deprecated" because all I would use it (and YTM) for was music. And now with Apple, I just think it as my "music" app. And regardless of platform, I find it absolutely demolishes Spotify top to bottom in UI/UX, audio options, discovery, app health, etc.)

I've never had AA/Carplay, so not surprised this has never bothered me. Makes me realize i'm missing an entire feature suite.

Have you tried it recently? I'm interested if you'd find it to be more "normie polished" than it used to be.

Edit: not sure why I'm defending an evil mega-corp, trying to justify my years of purchases I guess :)

I've fooled with it, but didn't see any draw. I removed it from my initial bloatware purge of my Pixel, including Google's launcher.

At a glance,

Things that leave a bad taste in my mouth:

- Genres > Metal > "Numb" by Linkin Park

- New Releases isn't organized by genre, which means you breathe through a straw, and hope Google brings a release to your attention.

- The "feed" New Releases which is apparently robo-tailored includes a Slowdive album from 1996, and a bunch of corporate stuff I'll likely never be in the mood for.

- no acknowledgement of labels, collectives, or studios. all very real constructs in current music.

- presumably live music recs are out even though those were never accurate to begin with

- there wasn't any on boarding, i guess im just to assume google knows who i am. went through onboarding, it's just there to slurp up artist relations and obtain feedback on recent trends it's inefficient and irritating out of touch

I like epitaph.

Awful volume bar on webapp, only mute+1 is usable volume level. iOS app fails to resume frequently so I need to kill and relaunch manually. Recommendation isn't interesting. Uploaded music is difficult to play unless I pick it manually. I doubt that they don't want us to play uploaded music because it's not good for CDN.