I used Google Music for streaming music ever since it became available in our country. I remember the first thing I did was to back up all my mp3s, but after that I used to stream many other songs and that worked just fine. I found everything that I was interested in on there.
At least for me it was a good music streaming service, had all I ever needed.
Now I switched to YT Music. Not sure how that's any different. It still plays most of the music I had bundled up in the playlists I created over the years and that's fine I guess. It seems a bit easier to find live sets from festivals with YT Music so that's a plus.
An issue with this approach is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Killing streaming subscriptions alternatives because they're on the decline definitely pushes that decline, even if it could have plateaued at some point where the service could have stayed viable.
Google Music was a solution for a generation where streaming subscriptions didn’t exist yet. That’s fine - it’s ok for products to die as the market changes and employees to move on to more relevant stuff.