Google has just announced the launch of a YouTube Music app for the Apple Watch. For folks keeping score at home, that means the streaming service all Google Music users are being forced to migrate to has debuted support for Apple's wearable platform before Google's own Wear OS. This makes the company's priorities pretty clear from where we're standing.

Thanks, Google

The app for Apple Watch includes a YouTube Music complication for direct watch face integration. From the app itself, you can listen to and browse YouTube music from the convenience of your Apple Watch, with all the controls you'd expect, including the ability to "like" songs and built-in cast functionality.

The feature requires a YouTube Premium or Premium Music subscription and works on Series 3 and later watches running watchOS 6 and above. Google tells us to "stay tuned" for updates on Wear OS availability.

Google's forced transition from Play Music to YouTube Music comes to a head this month. The Google Play music store is now dead, The Play Music app forces you to transition your music library to YouTube Music, and Assistant devices are proactively switching music providers. For Wear OS users, the worst part of this transition is that Google Play Music supported Wear OS for ages. As part of the switch to YouTube Music, Google even proactively removed Wear OS support before the service was discontinued and before YouTube Music had developed a replacement.

All this context seen through the lens of today's news leads us to a single conclusion: Google cares more about bringing YouTube Music to Apple's wearables than its own platform. What does that say about the future of Wear OS or Google's commitment to it? "Stay tuned."

Source: YouTube Blog