Google to stream music with new cloud services (Appolicious)

Google made some big announcements at its I/O conference in San Francisco today -- most notably, that it’s now gunning for iTunes.

The tech giant rolled out its Music Beta service, an iTunes-like bit of software that works from the Internet-based cloud rather than your computer’s hard drive. Much like Amazon’s music-streaming service, Google Music allows users to upload their songs to the cloud and then stream them anywhere, on computers or Android-based smartphones and tablets.

That will keep hard drives free while allowing users to set up playlists on any device and have it stream to the cloud, and they still get the option of specifying certain artists, albums, tracks or playlists that will be downloaded to their devices for offline play.

First Amazon, and now Google -- both huge companies are taking shots at Apple’s mobile and music supremacy, with not a lot going on over at the Apple camp. Dollars to donuts, that’s about to change.

We’ve been hearing that Apple is working on a cloud-based music service of its own, building a big server farm to accommodate the storage space and other considerations, but that it was hung up on licensing considerations. With Google clearing that hurdle, I’d wager that Apple can’t be far behind, especially because the company’s media business has been a huge part of its success during the last decade. The popularity of the iPod and the ease of use of iTunes led to the iPhone and then the iPad -- and Apple isn’t looking to hand off that torch to anybody, least of all Google, anytime soon.

So it seems like a fair bet to assume Apple will be announcing, in some capacity, its own streaming digital locker service for music (and other media, perhaps) when its Worldwide Developers Conference rolls around in early June. Apple’s preview graphic on its website says the event will preview the “future of iOS and Mac OS X,” and that will likely concern a lot of how media works with Apple’s powerhouse devices, seeing as a new iPhone and iOS rollout isn’t expected until September.

Google’s new services are a pretty good indicator of the things Apple will be setting as its baseline with its cloud service. Streaming to iOS devices is a given, and the combination online-offline setups seems like a solid choice as well. But Apple will definitely be coming to the party looking for ways to one-up the competition, because that’s really what it is best at doing. And all this competition suggests some very cool services and features coming to the mobile market.

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Google Music finally ready to take on iTunes (Appolicious)

It finally happened -- Google officially announced its music service, Google Music, at its Google I/O conference in San Francisco today.

The Google Music Beta is cloud-based and is currently in an invite-only stage, and will be “free for a limited time,” according to Google’s announcement. The service runs on all Android devices and is basically a lot like iTunes, but based on the Internet, or like Amazon’s Cloud Player service.

From what we’ve learned so far, Google Music will allow users to upload their music to an online “digital locker” directory, where they can stream it to just about any device they own, including PCs and Android-running tablets and phones. Like Amazon’s services and those like it, it’ll mean users can stream music without taking up hard drive space on their devices, should they choose.

But Google Music isn’t cloud-exclusive, meaning it’ll operate offline as well. It works by allowing users to pick and choose what songs, artists or albums they’ll want available in offline mode, which basically tells the cloud to download those songs to your device so they’re physically stored on-hand. Music will also support user-created playlists, which will keep chosen songs ready for offline mode, and will sync with the cloud so they’re persistent across all your devices.

Music also features an iTunes-like feature called Instant Mix, which sounds a little like Apple’s Genius feature. Clicking on a song and telling Google to build an Instant Mix around it will make a playlist of similar tracks to match the listener’s mood, without a lot of management. It sounds a lot like the way Pandora works with its Internet radio stations, grouping like songs together and bringing them to the listener without a lot of input. One wonders how robust Instant Mix is likely to be -- for example, if it will support mixes built using multiple songs or artists, the way Pandora does.

The big questions now surround how Google will price and roll out the service for users. Amazon’s cloud service is technically free right now, to a point -- it dishes out 5GB of space to users without charging them anything, and users who purchase songs through Amazon get a gratis bump up to 20GB for the first year. Similar services, like mSpot, run on a model that’s a lot like that, charging subscription fees per month or year the way Amazon will after the Cloud Player has cooled off a little.

It sounds like Google’s setup will be similar, although being as big as it is, it’s in a great position to really undercut the competition. And while Amazon was able to get out ahead of Google on music in the cloud, Google is still beating Apple to the punch, which is a pretty big deal considering the steady forward progress Google has been making in the smartphone and tablet markets. Any advantage Google can make its own is good for the company, considering that it’s still playing catch-up with Apple in many respects. With Google Music, at least until Apple rolls out its own cloud service, Google gets to be on the offensive.

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Google to launch online music service: report (Reuters)

(Reuters) – Google Inc could launch a new online music service as early as Tuesday, which will be similar to a service recently started by Amazon.com Inc, The Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The Journal said Google is likely to announce the service at its annual Google I/O developers conference in San Francisco, adding that the service will operate in a testing mode initially and not be available to the public at large.

In April, Amazon unveiled a service that allows customers to store about 1,000 songs on its web servers for free instead of their own hard drives and play them over an Internet connection directly from web browsers.

Google could not immediately be reached by Reuters for comment.

The Journal said Google has not sought licenses from the four major recorded-music companies and the new feature is likely to include a system that functions much like a remote hard drive.

Users could listen to songs they have uploaded to the service in a "streaming" mode, but will not be able to download the files, the daily reported.

Earlier in the day, Google-owned YouTube said it will add more than 3,000 mainstream movies for users to rent from Monday.

(Reporting by Renju Jose in Bangalore, editing by Bernard Orr)

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