Google to launch new music service: reports
10 May 2011
Google is expected show off a new music service resembling Amazon's Cloud Drive on today the company's I / O conference.
Peter Kafka of MediaMemo reported yesterday that Google Music would be launched today without the cooperation of major music labels. The report said it was originally planned to bring out a more robust version of the service but talks between Google and other labels failed.
According to Jamie Rosenberg, who oversees digital content and strategy for Google's Android platform, a couple of major labels had different ideas about business terms and were not open to the innovative vision the company had proposed.
Sans music licenses, Google will not be able to sell songs to users of the service according to Kafka. The company is planning offering free storage up to 20,000 and includes a feature that automatically generates playlists to differentiate itself from competing services.
Google Music is expected to launch with an invite-only beta today, and will within weeks expectedly roll it out to all US users. According to Google executive Zahavah Levine who spoke to CNet the service would require a browser that supported Flash, which would make it incompatible with Apple's iOS devices.
Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player services were launched in late March, offering 5GB of free storage, that would be enough for around 2,000 songs. Following the launch, reports stated that the online retailer had released the service without securing new licenses with the music labels which left media industry members stunned, with some calling the service illegal.
Amazon's cloud music service was launched with support for streaming via the web and on Google Android devices, but the company quietly began supporting Apple's iOS devices last week. iOS users visiting the site would receive a warning that the mobile Safari browser was not supported, however according to industry sources the serviced does indeed work though the service does indeed work with the Safari browser.