Google Inc. has unveiled a new music store, “but the giant web search company’s new music partners have already labeled the service ‘unexciting,” Yinka Adegoke and Alexei Oreskovic report for Reuters. “Music executives had been hoping for a more groundbreaking, fully functional cloud-based service; but after licensing talks broke down earlier this year, Google scaled back their ambitions.”
“Google has negotiated U.S. deals with three of the four major music companies: Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group; Sony Corp’s Sony Music Entertainment; and EMI,” Adegoke and Oreskovic report. “It has also signed deals with the increasingly influential independent label group Merlin and London-based Beggar’s Banquet label group, home to the biggest selling artist of the year, Adele… Warner Music Group Corp has yet to reach a deal.”
Adegoke and Oreskovic report, “Google had previously launched its unlicensed Music Beta service in May to indifferent reviews. Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with industry research firm Gartner… noted that Google’s track record taking on the entrenched online media players is not impressive. ‘Just look at their ebook effort … People just don’t think of Google as a major ebook player at this point. So it’s hard to see how they’re going to disrupt music away from Apple,’ he said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hey, three-quarters-baked is better than Our Lady of Perpetual Beta’s usual half-baked, right?
Related article:
Google TV review: ‘Apple wouldn’t dare to put out the crap that Google does’ – October 29, 2011
Google – smelling Apple’s farts since 2007.
To paraphrase Charles Emerson Winchester III, Dr Grunt-Buttock at Apple says “First, we don’t fart, we break wind. Second, we don’t break wind.”
“Music executives had been hoping for a more groundbreaking, fully functional cloud-based service…”
Well – big DUH! What the heck would make them think that Our Lady of Perpetual Beta was going to produce anything groundbreaking!!!?
Google will have a GREAT music service …
(The same day John Fogerty goes back to Creedence !)
I must say I totally disagree with all of the Apple fanboys here. I think it is a great music service. I uploaded my entire music library last night. I downloaded the app for my iPgone and iPad. It works flawlessly. Suddenly, I have no more storage space issues with my iPhone or iPad. The quality is excellent. As for the music sales part… It will only be a matter of time before Warner Bros comes aboard. This is not a threat to iTunes, but healthy competition… as it should be.
Those of you that underestimate Google do so at your own peril.
Oops… My bad. Darn iPhone “spell check” got me on the word iPhone!!!!
iSee the effects of Google on your phone! First it’s Spell Check. Next your iPhone will have brain farts! 😉
peace!
IF you uploaded your library last night, your library must be a dozen albums or less.
The rest of us have real collections… which is why iTunes Match is so superior.
They have a good selection of Indie Artists, I’ll give them that!
I have not uploaded my music to their ‘cloud’ so I cannot comment on how well the streaming playback works.
I heard Google will enable independent musicians to sell their art directly through Google Music for the same 70/30 split pioneered by Apple with the App Store. If so that’s far more meaningful than anything else and I sure wish Apple would follow suit with iTunes (if anything Apple should’ve been there first).
Apple’s iTunes store already does. They have for years.
It does? Where?
“licensing talks broke down earlier this year”
Gargle probably wanted rights to all of the music for free. Why start paying for anything now? It’s not how their world works.
Steal everything in sight, give it away, charge for the advertising (which we all LOVE!)
The beauty of Apple’s approach is that the “cloud” is mostly in the background, as it should be. It is not front-and-center, like with Amazon and Google.
If you sign up for iTunes Match, the cloud-based service does the work.
+ Previously purchased iTunes Store songs are immediately available. Apple has kept very good records. No uploading needed.
+ Other songs are analyzed, and if the iTunes Store library has a song, it is immediately available. No uploading needed.
+ Songs that are not in the iTunes Store library are automatically uploaded.
+ Supporting data, such as playlists, are also uploaded from iTunes.
There is no manual uploading or deciding what to upload and what not to upload. There is no downloading and using a separate app, because it’s all a part of using iTunes. There is no setting up playlists again, because the ones you already have in iTunes are used.
It’s not really about the “cloud,” it’s about convenience and user experience.
Google’s great fear isn’t Apple. it’s not MS anymore either. Amazon is some concern. but most of all, it’s FaceBook.