I’m pretty sure this will get buried with all the other Youtube Music threads, but I could not find one that describes my situation. Now that Google Play Music is being decommissioned, I find myself with a prospect for a severely degraded experience.
I have a Google Play Music / Youtube Music subscription (family plan, if that matters at all).
I also have a Sonos Beam + 2x Ikea Symfonisk as surrounds.
I want a very simple thing - to put a mix of music on my system, starting from a certain song. No offline playback, no personal library, no custom playlists.
(As a bit of a background, I previously used a Google Home Mini speaker to which I could say “Hey Google, play X by Y” and it would play that song and continue a mix on Google Play Music - there was no Youtube Music back then)
So how can I do that?
- In the Google Play Music App - search for song, hit the three dots → Start Radio. Then, click the “Cast” button and choose my Sonos setup
- This is the only way I found it to work satisfactory now
- Google Play Music will be decommissioned soon so this will stop working
- In the Youtube Musc App - In the Google Play Music App - search for song, hit the three dots → Start Radio. Then, click the “Cast” button.
- Sonos does not appear as a cast target. I’ve already opened a case with the Youtube Music app support team for this
- There’s a Google support thread from April 2019 about this, with no signs of any traction
- Use Google Assistant on Phone/Beam and say “Hey Google, play X by Y” with Google Play Music set as my default music provider
- The song starts playing but it’s a once-off, no instant mix is created
- Use Google Assistant on Phone/Beam and say “Hey Google, play X by Y” with Youtube Music set as my default music provider
- The song starts playing but it’s a once-off, no instant mix is created
- Also it seems to be prone to “playback is paused because your account is used in another location” (!?)
- In the Sonos App - search for song on Google Play Music, start playing it, and the click the three dots → Start Radio
- This used to be more streamlined, with the “Start Radio” option in the search results, but seems to have moved after upgrading to S2
- Also, it seems this method is prone to repeating the first song (the “seed”) after a few other songs (link to relevant discussion)
- Google Play Music will be decommissioned soon so this will stop working
- In the Sonos App - search for song on Youtube Music
- In the song three dots menu, there is no option to Start Radio
- After starting to play that song (single song), in the three dots menu, there is still no option to Start Radio (like the scenario with Google Play Music above)
So bottom line, the only scenarios that give me satisfactory results will stop working in 2-4 months. Google doesn’t seem too keen on fixing their Youtube Music App, and Sonos likewise doesn’t seem to care about adding more than basic functionality for the Youtube Music service.
Have I lucked out with building a Google Play Music / Sonos ecosystem?
I’m really tempted to switch to Spotify but I really really liked the mixes Google Play Music was providing, and its seemingly complete library (there have only been 2 or 3 albums that I could not find).