Google reportedly testing Play Music’s best feature for YouTube Music

In 2018, Google executive T. Jay Fowler confirmed on Twitter that the company planned to migrate Google Play Music subscriber catalogs, playlists, and preferences over to YouTube Music, which at the time it had just re-relaunched as its own paid streaming service with Fowler at the helm. A few months shy of two years later, 9to5Google reports that Google has developed an internal beta version of YouTube Music that may add at least some of this long-awaited functionality.

Specifically, 9to5Google says the new version adds support for user-uploaded music — one of the best features of Google Play Music. It might not sound exciting to everyone, but humor me for a moment. Music streaming services have almost everything you might imagine listening to in the cloud. But a user-uploaded music feature is great to have in those rare instances when a particular artist or album isn’t available to stream. Being able to upload files yourself without having to use a different music app is wonderful.

There’s no indication as to whether this internal version of YouTube Music also includes playlist and preference migration, as was promised in 2018. The Verge has reached out to Google for comment on this development.

Google originally told The Verge it planned to transition Play Music subscribers to YouTube Music in 2019. That obviously didn’t happen, but this may be a sign that 2020 could be the year when YouTube Music absorbs more of its Google predecessor and becomes a serious music streaming service.