Google Forging Ahead with Music Storage Locker without Label Licenses

Posted 05/10/2011 at 10:04am | by Paul Lilly

2

Comments

Print

Word on the web is that Google later today is going to launch a music service, but not as originally intended. After being unable to hammer out agreements with record labels, Google is said to be following in Amazon's footsteps with a digital music locker service without any licensing deals in place. Music Beta by Google, as the search giant plans to call it, will let users upload their tracks to a storage locker in the cloud where they can be streamed and downloaded to any Internet connected devices.

"We've been in negotiations with the industry for a different set of features, with mixed results," Zahavah Levine, Google director of content partnerships, told Billboard. "[But] a couple of major labels were less focused on innovation and more on demanding unreasonable and unsustainable business terms."

So it usually goes, and so Google will go at it without the support of major music labels. According to Billboard's sources, it was Sony Music Group and Universal Music Group that ultimately wouldn't budge. What Google originally wanted to do was offer a scan-and-match locker service, so instead of uploading tracks, the service would scan a user's library and match the songs they own to a centralized server. Rights holders would have been compensated for each stream.

Google has yet to announce the beta service, which will reportedly be by invite only, but several details are already available. For one, audio quality for streaming files can be as high as 320kbps if the device and network supports it. It's going to be optimized for Android 3.0, though any Android device version 2.2 or above can support it. Also, devices will display all available music in a single view, rather than one list for music stored on the device and another for music stored in Google's locker.