It appears YouTube Music is being prepped to play locally stored files

When YouTube Music (in its new form) debuted earlier this year, many saw this as the writing on the wall for Play Music. As YouTube Music offered subscription music services and was poised to take on Spotify, there really would be no need for Play Music to also compete (other than this being Google, of course). As YouTube is a much more popular brand name, Play Music would certainly be on the way out.

As good as YouTube Music may be, which is debatable, there was still many features missing that made Play Music a preferred option. For instance, offline playback and local file playback were glaringly missing from YouTube Music while Play Music easily offered it. However, Google made it clear that features will be migrated to YouTube Music over time, and it appears that some of those features are live now.

According to 9to5Google, in a teardown of the APK, there now appears to be options dedicated to native files. In the permissions section, YouTube Music has always been given the option for storage permissions, but there was never any use for this. However, there are now strings in the app showing scenarios where the message "Track cannot be played" or "YouTube Music does not have permission to play files" in relation to playing files. This would suggest that YouTube Music is prepping to integrate the ability to play local files.

Souce: 9to5google

We will have to wait to see future updates and announcements from Google, but it appears that the most loved feature of Play Music (in addition to free background playing) is on its way to YouTube Music.