Continuing on the theme from the last post, I have been testing Google's enforced replacement for Google Play Music, YouTube Music. Last time I tried using it with a Google Home speaker, and found it unusable for my needs. This post will be about Android Auto.
All of my music sits on my phone, mostly in MP3 format, and Google Play Music is happy to play this in Android Auto. I can select the music by voice or touch. YouTube Music, via my car's touchscreen, starts promisingly, giving me the option to select my Device files, then Albums, then pick an album or search by letter. The Beatles is handily filed under 'B'. It then stops rather abruptly with the message 'Please upgrade your YouTube account in order to access this feature'. This seems to be a pattern with YouTube Music. A monthly subscription is required to use YouTube Music to play music you already own.
If the Google Play Music app stops working then at least there are third party music players which work with Android Auto and don't force you to pay a monthly fee, so I will switch to one of them. This will certainly discourage me from purchasing more music from Google, if they make it so inconvenient to listen to.