According to a report published recently, Google is looking to open a music store which will compete with similar services from Apple and Amazon.
The news comes from Media Decoder – a blog on New York Times – in a report which cites “numerous music executives” who claim that Google is currently negotiating with major record labels so that the company can start their own music store.
Google was hoping to announce the music store before Apple’s iTunes Match feature (part of iCloud) but couldn’t because deals with record labels weren’t closed in due time.
From New York Times:
Five months after it introduced a cloud music service with limited capabilities, Google is in negotiations with the major record labels to expand that service and also open an MP3 store that would compete with Apple and Amazon.
According to numerous music executives, Google is eager to open the store in the next several weeks.
If Google does, in fact, launch their own music store, it will be deeply integrated into their Music Beta service. Music Beta by Google was announced back in May; it allows users to upload their music (up to 20,000 songs) to Google’s servers so that they can be stream it to their Android smartphone/tablet or to any web browser which supports Adobe Flash:
It would most likely be connected to Google’s existing cloud service, Music Beta, which lets people back up their songs on remote servers and stream them to mobile phones and other devices, said these executives, who all spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private and continuing.
Music Beta is currently in, as you can tell from its name, beta stage and invite-only for US residents, but is expected to open up on October 19th at Samsung and Google’s joint event where the Google Nexus Prime based on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is expected to be announced.
Amazon and Apple have great content providing services. If you buy an iOS device, you will have no trouble finding movies, TV shows, books right out of the box. Similarly, if you plan to get an Amazon Kindle Fire, you’ll get integrated access to Amazon’s music, movies and books store. This isn’t the case with Android smartphones and tablets, which is why it would be a good idea for Google to open up their own music store.
Google has refused to comment on the report.
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