It's not obvious but the way to do this is to "pin" (aka mark as keeping for offline) playlists on the device. Create a few travel playlists, pin them on the device, put the device on wifi or change the data settings in the app, go to the web client and mass drag and drop songs onto the travel playlists. I manage about 6 GB worth of offline music this way and it works decently. Once in a while you have to go into settings and tap "Refresh Music" to get it to recognize a new playlist but I maybe do that once a month.

I can be listening at work, add a song to the playlist, and then back at home the device automatically downloads the new song over wifi for when I go running. (I'm sure spotify does this too)

This is what's stopping me from paying for it. I already pay for Pandora, and my wife and I are able to share that. Sharing an entire google account isn't going to happen.

There is actually cross-over, whether you like it or not (most people don't). Youtube Music Key: https://www.youtube.com/musickey

http://lifehacker.com/whats-the-point-of-youtube-music-key-1...

I say YouTube is probably the number one way most teenagers actually listen to music. This isn't music videos mostly. It is pictures of the cover art and the music. I seriously listen to my music through YouTube in another and I am rarely disappointed in not finding the music I am looking for.

What is not to like. I can listen with the screen turned off. I use this feature to listen to one off podcast I would like to list to and the YouTube play list made by users are amazing. Also to have no ads while listening to YouTube music is great.

No ads is nice, but useless for anyone who is willing/able to install an ad blocker on their phone. You can promote content producers more effectively by spending the money you would drop on a subscription on buying an album, going to a show, subscribing on Twitch or becoming a patron on Gratipay anyway.

Offline access is nice, but other commentors claim it's "clunky", and if it's not especially convenient, then it doesn't give me anything I havent been able to do for the last decade with youtube downloader apps.

So really all it does is make the mobile background play a paid feature, which is obnoxious.

It's very anti-user, I use it to listen to longer podcasts in the background.

Worth rooting for: http://repo.xposed.info/module/com.pyler.youtubebackgroundpl...

http://kaeruct.github.io/posts/how-to-use-the-youtube-js-api...

If I want to watch music videos I'll go to the Youtube app. So damn annoying when I accidently tap the play video hover button when I really meant to swipe to the next song.

If it weren't for YouTube's popularity I'd say the integration was a sign of desperation.

Google Music keeps track of every radio station you create and listen to, but it is sorted by last played in a single list.

I have 10 radio stations that I really enjoy, but I try to not try out too many new ones in case I lose the ones I really like. It has happened a few times.

The "save queue" option is nice... but it destroys any discoverability off that station because it is now a static playlist.

Edit: Radio station downloading now seems to grab at least twice the amount it used to. Which puts it firmly in the "meh" category when it comes to usefulness.

You may not have noticed if you use an adblocker, but your Google Music subscription now removes ads on music videos on YouTube (as well as the ability to save videos offline on your Android device)

Could you explain what you have lost exactly ?

>The offline playback stuff continues to be pretty clunky to set up.

What is your issue with it ? In my experience, it works fairly well.

I am genuinely curious

....

I don't how to make it start downloading them again.

I agree that this is sub-optimal, but I think up until recently it was actually impossible unless you started another download and tapped the notification.

I sometimes start syncing an album before commuting. It stumble and stops in the metro but starts again by itself afterwards.

I am not sure what the default behavior of the app is. Probably to only download while on wifi, so it does not kill your data allocation. Again, you need to go in the settings in order to change this. Better than having angry users I guess.