In a move to compete with Apple iTunes -- and the rest of the digital music industry -- Music Beta by Google is now officially Google Music. But analysts said that just because the name Google is on the service doesn't mean it will gain traction in a market dominated largely by Apple and Amazon, as well as emerging streaming services like Spotify.
Google Music mimics some of the features Apple and Amazon offer with their cloud features, such as automatically syncing a listener's music library, both purchases and uploads, across all devices without cables, file transfers or space concerns. Google Music also keeps playlists intact on every device and allows for music listening offline.
With the official launch of Google Music comes a new music store in Android Market. The store offers more than 13 million tracks from artists on Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and the global independent rights agency Merlin, along with more than 1,000 independent labels. Google also partnered with the digital distributors of independent music including IODA, INgrooves, The Orchard and Believe Digital.
Unique Artist Hub
"You can purchase individual songs or entire albums right from your computer or your Android device and they'll be added instantly to your Google Music library and accessible anywhere," said Andy Rubin, senior vice president of mobile at Google.
"Good music makes you want to turn up the volume, but great music makes you want to roll down the windows and blast it for everyone. We captured this sentiment by giving you the ability to share a free full play of a purchased song with your friends on Google+."
Rubin also described the artist hub. The Google Music artist hub lets any artist who has the necessary rights to distribute their own music on the platform. Artists can use the artist hub interface to build an artist page, upload original tracks, set prices and sell content directly to fans. This may be a selling point for independent artists, but analysts aren't convinced that Google Music will be a hit.
A Collective Ho-Hum
"Google Music has been expected for well over a year and was also pre-announced, so the official launch yesterday was met largely with a kind of collective ho-hum, if not indifference" said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. "Google is also following many years after iTunes and more recently Amazon. There are also independent services such as Spotify that are already quite successful."
Sterling hasn't used Google Music extensively, so he declined to speak directly to how easy it is to use. Over time, he expects the fledgling service to improve and gain some adoption. However, he doesn't expect any mass adoption in the near term. There's also the possibility that if it fails to drive meaningful consumer usage within a year or two Google could shutter it, he added. Google has shuttered other projects, including Google Buzz.
"It's curious to me that Google is launching this service at all. It doesn't need to. At one time, music appeared to be a missing piece from Android. But given the platform's success, the absence of a music store hasn't hurt it at all," Sterling said.
"One could see this as part of Google's larger entertainment-content play, which includes YouTube. In addition online search for lyrics and artists has significant volume. Now Google has its own repository of content to serve those queries. The question in my mind is, How 'committed' is Google to Music? We'll see."
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20111117/tc_nf/81052
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