According to a message from the Google mothership, Google Play Music is going to join My Space and Lotus 1-2-3 in digital purgatory. It’s going away.

The message doesn’t lament the service’s demise. Instead, it cheerfully explains how Google Play Music is being taken taken over by YouTube Music.

For years, people have known that you can listen to music on YouTube: Search for a song. Listen. Free.

Google knew this bending of its service: In addition to showing videos, YouTube became a music platform. It’s been through several of these incarnations the past few years. I forget whether it was called YouTube Plus or YouTube Premium — and it might just be YouTube Music after all — but the service is heavily promoted, with the YouTube app asking whether you want to go for a free trial.

Nope.

Now word comes down that sometime later this year, Google Play Music vanishes and YouTube Music takes its place. This change requires some effort: You need to migrate your music library (purchases and uploads) from Google Play Music over to YouTube music. I have no idea how this process works in detail.

I do know, however, that YouTube Music is a separate app from YouTube. This name is silly because, why use the name “YouTube”? The service was originally designed for short video clips. After it was purchased by Google they have continually wanted to muck it up. YouTube Music is the next step, but the name continues to puzzle me. Could it be branding?

As my Android For Dummies books remain static, I’ll provide updates here when I know more about what’s going on. And if they plan any updates to Google Play Books or Play Movies & TV, I’ll let you know. Weird stuff.