David Emery OnlineWithout The Labels, Google’s Music Locker Service Will Look Like Apple’s Ugly Sibling. Again.
10 May 2011
This evening the WSJ reported that after a year of (failed) discussions with the labels Google will finally be launching a music service tomorrow at Google I/O — and it’s very similar to Amazon’s, which also doesn’t have approval from the labels. I spoke with Google’s Jamie Rosenberg, head of digital content and strategy for Android, who confirmed the news. And while he says that Google will improve on Amazon’s offering in many ways, one month from now I’m guessing it will look significantly less impressive.
A Flash-based music locker without label involvement (meaning you have to upload all your MP3s yourself, which will take ages) is hardly very exciting or innovative, is it?
The one interesting thing about this is that this beta version is going to be free, and I can see it staying that way (with ads, of course, but also just to fortify the Android platform). That’s going to make Amazon’s life in this market pretty difficult…
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