Thank you for doing this. This is seriously awesome.
I will refer to Google Play Music as GPM throughout this post, because GPM is a ridiculously long name. Particularly since the result is going to be a lot of whining.
Things I would like to see improved:
I mostly listen to my entire music library on random playback. The number of clicks it takes to do this on mobile is too high. If I force close the app, I have to do the following: Swipe from the left. Select My Library. Select the Songs tabs. I know some people really like creating playlists and stuff. I hate them. Please just make it easy for me to start playback of my entire library.
(Again on mobile) When you click the My Library thing in the left sidebar, it defaults to a tab I don't find particularly useful (Artists). I think the idea behaviour would be for it to default to the tab you were in last. There are 4 tabs in this view, here are my views on them:
Why can't I pin music to my phone from the Songs tab?
Why can't I pin music to my phone from that view that you get when you swipe up from the bottom?
Why can't I pin music to my phone from basically anywhere?
When I click the GPM thing in the notification tray, it takes me to the view that you get when you swipe up from the bottom. Why? What is that view even useful for?
The GPM thing in the notification tray is not Lolipop themed.
On the desktop (well, web with a desktop browser) version, there is a google chrome extension that lets you use media keys. This only works when you sign in to Chrome with the same account as you GPM account. I mostly use the desktop/web version of GPM at work. I am not going to sign in to Chrome on my work computer with my home account simply because I don't want my home browsing history to end up on my work computer. I should be able to sign into the extension with whatever account and have it just work.
My parents have property in the middle of no where. Literally the closest cellular reception is a 25 minute drive. Yet when I put my phone into Airplane Mode and GPM into Download Only mode, it still randomly stops playback to sync shit over the network. At least I assume that is what it is doing (the icon is the circular loading animation). Why is it doing this? Is there actually a way to tell the GPM app to never try to use the network as it simply isn't a possibility?
I'm stealing this from other people: but I want to be able to permanently blacklist an artist.
Scrolling in the web version doesn't feel right. It seems to scroll differently from every other app/webpage ever. If I scroll fast, in most apps/webpages it scrolls a longer distance. It seems the GPM webpage has deliberately compensated for this, which is not a good thing considering how much scrolling needs to be done.
The mechanisms GPM has to introduce you to new music suck. The Autogenerated playlist that came after you bought Songza generally don't produce music I like. Occasionally I can find something I like, but that's seriously rare. The I'm Feeling Lucky Radio seems to pick a random metal artist in my library and play a playlist based on that. I mostly only like select metal songs from my teen years, but according to I'm Feeling Lucky Radio that's all I like. Basically it picks the artists I am least likely to want a playlist built around and builds a playlist around them. Awesome. I would have liked it if it instead did something that took my entire library into account. That would probably result in music I like more frequently. I think.
I have saved my biggest issue with GPM for last. The random playback feature isn't very random. These days, most services aren't. They seem random but play songs it thinks you like more than normal. GPM's implementation of that is pretty crap. It tends to circlejerk itself into thinking I like a song a lot because it has previously decided to play that song a lot. This has lead me to dislike a lot of songs in my library because I got sick of hearing them. Before I figured out what was going on I removed them. I used to have over 800 songs in my library. Now I have 567 because I removed a bunch because I got sick of how frequently GPM would play them.
If I look at the 25 most played tracks in my library, I would say 10 are there because I tend to pick them a lot. The other 15 are the product of GPM playing these songs a lot because it thinks I like them because it has played them a lot.
One weird way this has manifests itself is by playing songs starting with the letter P a lot. I like to say that GPM is brought to you by the letter P :P. I have 24 songs starting with the letter P in my library or 4%. If I start a new random playback session, 13 of the first 50 songs started with the letter P. Half of my P songs where in the first 50 tracks.
On the flip side, I have songs in my library that have been there for over a year and still have 0 plays. Why isn't it playing these. It has had over a year to do so? My top 25 songs have between 170 and 60 plays. My bottom 25 have between 0 and 2. While it is perfectly possible for this outcome to be the result of a truly random process, You would expect that it would tend towards a roughly equal representation of songs.
And I would like to re-iterate: this has lead me to dislike music that I previously liked. Kinda shitty when you think about it.
Even though this won't save this post from being a bitchfest, here are some things I really like compared to competing services: