Google Music Service To Launch By Christmas, Source Reports

wired.com:

Google is in talks with music labels on plans for a download store and a digital song locker that would allow its mobile users to play songs wherever they are as it steps up its rivalry with Apple, according to people familiar with the matter.

Read the whole story: wired.com

Comments

[JohnUSA]

02:57 PM on 09/07/2010

Good, I hope it is as easy to use as, let's say, Picasa.
ITunes on the other hand, I find difficult to use. It's almost not like an Apple product.

[bluguy8]

02:34 PM on 09/07/2010

do you get fries with that ?

[eric14]

01:43 PM on 09/07/2010

Radio, Youtube and your friends' music is free. Recession has arrived and is here to stay.
Retail price of music has to drop further to around 20% of present price. technology has lowered distribution costs and cut other overheads.

It has happened to hardware.
It should happen to software.
And all content, including music.

Buy a new track? 10c. Old track? 1c.

[Alien Nation]

03:07 PM on 09/07/2010

Not likely. When a studio has to pay $25,000 for the control desk the tune was mixed down on they would have to sell 25,000,000 copies of a single song to pay for said desk.

I guess you figured music is recorded and produced on love and creativity instead of expensive equipment and hard work.

[eric14]

04:11 PM on 09/07/2010

They don't buy a desk for each tune. Cost of all studio equipment has dropped. Main costs are fees of agents, managers and musicians. Musicians and agents of reasonable sellers become very rich very quickly. They are overpaid. They need to make much less. Same goes for TV shows and movies. Consumers are being ripped off to sustain lifestyles of the rich and famous. It need not be this way.

[kinogod]

11:18 AM on 09/07/2010

Good luck with that

[JasonMcl]

10:16 AM on 09/07/2010

If the service does the following:

1. Sells the music as a license instead of just a 50 megabyte album which means they either:

A: Allow users to download the music as many times as they wish on as many different devices as they please and play said music so long as they are logged into the service.

B: Allow users to stream licensed music indefinitely so long as they are logged into the service.

2. You allow independent Artists to post and sell their own music without a publisher, making it sort of like a "Music App Store". This would go a long way towards reclaiming music from the recording industry and would bring music to the users without any kind of focus group filtering.

We will see how the industry reacts to it. I think that most of the labels realize by now that digital distribution has actually saved them. I think a lot of them are excited about the possibility of an iTunes competitor which has the potential to reach a lot more customers.

[netzwerg]

12:53 PM on 09/07/2010

".....so long as they are logged into the service."

That does not work. I don't buy DRM stuff either. When I buy it, I want to own if indefinately, not just as long I subscribe to that service.

[JasonMcl]

02:11 PM on 09/07/2010

Well... there are ways to do this properly to ensure validity of purchases without screwing over the user.

I think that right now the absolute best digital distributor is Valve's "Steam" system for gaming sales and distribution. It is decades ahead of its time and represents the pinnacle of what a DDS should be.

Let me give you some examples of why this is so awesome:

Service:
- costs nothing to use
- your games or cd keys can never be scratched or lost
- allows you to download your games and install / uninstall at will
- you can backup your entire library of games for offline use
- your games update to their latest patches automatically

Sales:
- around 10 games marked 10-75% off each weekend
- 3 games every wednesday
- Every summer / winter they put their entire library on sale

Social:
- allows you add in friends and to form groups (clans etc)
- allows you to make free voice calls to anyone you are friends with
- pays handsomely to independent developers

Steam is just so good that it basically eliminates the need to even consider pirating games. Even though it is DRM, it is still extremely fair to the user. The service just works.

If the music\movie industry were to follow this example of how to secure their property rights and still be fair to users, well you would see a fraction of the current piracy rates.

[NHBill]

09:30 AM on 09/07/2010

Google entering the music biz to compete directly with Apple is good for everyone in the long run except radio. Music radio has one foot in the grave already. Cloud based music services may just be the fatal blow.

[JasonMcl]

10:20 AM on 09/07/2010

I read somewhere that the recording industry was trying to make the radio industry turn over a few hundred billion a year in royalties in exchange for mandating FM radio on all future cell phones.

Kind of sounds like a raw deal for radio.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/radio-riaa-mandatory-fm-radio-in-cell-phones-is-the-future.ars

[NHBill]

11:08 AM on 09/07/2010

It looks like the dinosaur fight from King Kong to me.

[jabreal00]

05:43 PM on 09/07/2010

Apart from NPR or CSPAN I do not listen to radio. It's a dead media to me.