Google confirms merging YouTube & Play Music teams for ‘best possible product’

Google is merging the teams behind its music streaming applications- Google Play Music and YouTube Music into a single division to “deliver the best possible product for users, music partners, and artists.”

As first reported by The Verge, the merger of product teams has now been confirmed by the company itself. Music is very important to Google and we’re evaluating how to bring together our music offerings to deliver the best possible product for our users, music partners, and artists. Nothing will change for users today and we’ll provide plenty of notice before any changes are made,” a Google spokesperson said.

This change comes on the heels of another move last year that saw the two business development teams combine to make label and artist negotiation easier for Google as a whole.

Play Music is the more traditional service with the ability for users to upload their tracks to the cloud. A subscription provides offline access to 35 million songs, while there are also podcasts features and machine learning-powered recommendations.

Meanwhile, YouTube Music technically has the larger collection and better branding. Currently, nothing will change for the end-user accessing the two different music streaming applications. Both YouTube Music, as well as Play Music are expected to continue to exist independently for the moment. There is no word on the future of the two apps as yet but Google will likely push for the creation of a unified product experience.