Google Music Store Inches Closer?

smallguy78 writes "Forbes is once again reporting on Google plans to launch its own competitor to iTunes, a Google music store. From the article: 'The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services.'" We have touched on this subject previously. This most recent report would seem to indicate the launch will happen sooner rather than later.

Google's first serious misstep?

From the Fine Article:

"The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services," wrote the analyst in a recent report.

One of two things has to give here: either the music industry's unhappiness is sustained because Google has enough principle to do on-line music equitably (which, by definition will be unhappiness for the music industry); or Google capitulates and in the process violates their "Do No Evil" credo.

This could be a misstep for Google if they appear to be in the pockets of an increasingly strident and miserable music industry. Please let them do the right thing.

Of course, for the gazillionth time, the only right way to do this is unencumbered media. Hey, I can hope.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

I see this as a great opportunity. But Google will only ever have the same leverage that Apple has over the Majors. What we really need, is Google (or another well-publicized company) to become a music label. They have the guts to do their own promotion, they can distribute non-DRM stuff and they can easily attract existing well-known artists with attractive deals.

This IMO is the only short-term hope against the majors.

Basically, we need a Good Guy (TM) with deep pockets to raise a middle finger to the majors.

However, I fear this is not going to happen anytime soon.

--
XviD review [palmdrive.net]

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

That's Apple.

Sorry, no. If Apple were the "good guy," they might use DRM, but they would make it available to other device manufacturers. The only reason for the iPod lock-in is to benefit Apple.

Not that I think there's anything inherently wrong with this - that's business, after all. But don't put Apple out there as some altruistic "good guy."

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

Did you read the rest of the post? Please do.

I don't believe Apple is altruistic, just as I don't believe Google is altruistic, and I never said so. What I did say is that Apple is the best consumer representative we're going to get for digital music under the current system, because Apple makes their money primarily from hardware sales, with the lion's share of song profits going to the RIAA. Apple could conceivably stop selling songs online. They'd take a hit, but people could go back to buying CDs and pirating music just as the did before iTMS. The hit to the RIAA would be greater.

As I said, the lock-in does benefit Apple. But what is the upside to Apple opening up FairPlay, even to device manufacturers? Now they have to support a bunch of different MP3 players and they have to make up in song sales what they lose in hardware sales. And then they are dependent on the RIAA and they lose their bargaining power. Their sole advantage is that the RIAA needs them a lot more than they need the RIAA. Take that away and Apple is beholden to the RIAA, just like every other music company, and we lose the only advocate we have.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

what is it with the childlike obsession wih the "do no evil" credo? It's kind of absurd.

if you have a gmail account, they're probably doing evil with your consumer preferences right now.

re: a music store. Oooooooooooh, a shiny new music store. How innovative, Google. They're like eight years too late with that.

It's a misstep for google to be opening a music store.

As of yet, they don't have a million subscribers for gmail. if they do, they've passed that threshold so recently that there is little info on it. they haven't passed a million subscribers to gtalk either. they haven't shown any uptake for any of their products other than google, which means the general audience is either unaware of their consumer efforts and/or uninterested.

I've used Microsoft Live ... and it's a pretty good integrated suite, a bit better than google offers... already, and Live is in true beta - like less than a year beta as opposed to fifth year senior beta.

looking at the world through google glasses is to obscure the reality. YouTube is eating Google Video's lunch. they only hold the search engine market - and deeper pocket will continue to assial them from all sides.

In your parlance, they'll need to do boatloads of evil just to SURVIVE.

Google = fairy tales for adults. They're just some guys who turned a graduate project into some cash folks. Relax.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

I'm far from a Google fanboy, but you're full of bullshit.

re: a music store. Oooooooooooh, a shiny new music store. How innovative, Google. They're like eight years too late with that.

It's a misstep for google to be opening a music store.

Ooooh, a search engine! How innovative, Google. I mean, given Yahoo!, Altavista and what not, a *search* engine?

Gmail? Another email?! How innovative, Google! They're like, what, 30 years late? Or 40 years late? But from what I see, most people who've used Gmail hardly ever tend to use anything else.

Ever strike you that the million users that *mail has might be - just *might be* - because they don't have spammers signing up for thousands fake addresses?

Sheesh.

Remember that first mover advantage is very limited and very short lived. First movers may sometimes make it big, but the ones that come later also have the ability to not do your mistakes and improve upon what you've already built upon.

And they know that there exists a market that they can tap into, which is more than what the first mover had.

If you take anything that Google's done (Search, Maps, News, Email, IM), they've taken what others have done it and tried perfecting it. A much better idea than finding new niche markets.

Dynamic Pricing Based on Plays

If Google launched their own player along with the store, I could envision a pricing model that based the price of the songs on the number of plays it was receiving from its purchasers.

Over time, the cost of this track would become less and less and all of the "filler" tracks would slide fairly rapidly.

Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ [runfatboy.net] -- Exercise for the rest of us.

I have a good idea?

Probably, filtering out stories who's headline ends with a question mark would augment the overall quality of the Slashdot content and, especially, the headlines.

Oh, great.

Now, Britney Spears will have to resort to Google bombing to increase her sales...

Inches closer...

This headline reminds me of the "Far Side" strip where two cavemen are standing outside of their cave with a glacier wall just inches away, and one of the cavemen is saying, "Say, Thag, wall of ice closer today?"

I can see a version of this strip where the cavemen are Steve Jobs/Apple and the glacier is Google...

what format?

Of course there's no mention of file format. Since the audio players out there generally play some combination of MP3, AAC, and WMA, it's only reasonable to assume that the store will sell in one of those formats. Since we know it will need DRM to make the labels happy, that pretty much narrows it down to PlaysForSure WMA. If that's the case, there're already plenty of competitors out there. What will make this store different from Rhapsody, Yahoo, Napsters, etc?

On what device?

Afaik, Apple won't allow non fairplay DRM on their ipod .. so I ask on what device will this music play on?

How many people are going to want to have two devices, one to play their hundreds of dollars in itunes music (that only plays on ipod) and another to play songs purchased from Google.

Anyway if they end up using an Open DRM format .. I know I'd be happy with 'em.

why google will fail it

>"The music industry is broadly unhappy..."

hence why customers are broadly happy with iTunes - it's FAIR!

Hmmmm

Stop teasing! I want my google OS already!

Prediction

$60 / month for up to 12 DRM laden, non transferrable 128kbps windows audio files. If the labels are dictating the terms you know the deal will suck ass.

Server Centric?

Going by google's general productline, gTunes[:-s] could be a server centric music player - only problem is that'l fall flat on its face.

Still if it does come out, I expect Google to fit it in with its 'organise the world's information' line.

Perhaps just using their search algorithm to find the music you want to buy is enough.. perhaps...

Product Name

Going by google's general productline, gTunes[:-s] could be a server centric music player

I guess you meant Gtunes *Beta* :-)

The Missing Link Found?

Perhaps the eternally elusive missing link has been found...

Step 1. Anything

Step 2. Google

Step 3. Profit!

Only once piece of the picture...

How does the music store interact with players, especially the iPod?

Can users easily manage their music libraries?

What kind of file formats will be available?

Overall, the article makes it sound like Google is very focused on the music industry. I understand this to a point, but Google's users won't be too happy if the music industry seems like it is in too much control. Users are willing to pay, but they expect a certain level of freedom and choice. The user experience is at least as crucial as buy in from the music industry. Or, in other words, Google needs to consider both supply and demand.

OMFG

This is news for nerds and the headline is using the imperial system? Metric, please, metric.

The music industry is broadly unhappy

Is there anything that pleases the music industry? I am simply tired of reading about these whining gazillionaires.

Name?

Introducing "Goosic" or what about... "Moosic"... or something as wonderful as "Mugoosicgle"?

Or how about something that just as describing as "Ekiga", which is real easy to remember.

Sarcasm intended.

Who wants the service - industry or consumer?

When I read the comment pulled from the article:

"The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services."

I thought to myself, "If the music industry is broadly unhappy, then Apple is probably doing something right."

What we should be hearing is how Google is stepping up to offer alternative services that address a gap that consumers are experiencing. Instead that quote would indicate that Google is stepping up to offer alternatives to the music industry. Frankly, I don't hear too many people (myself included) in the mainstream complaining about the options. I'm all for capitalism and competition and welcome Google to the game. However, I'm going to remain skeptical about this until I fully understand where Google is going with this.

--
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." - Churchill

Unending greed?

From TFA: "The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services."

What part are they unhappy about? Making tons of money not enough, they want more? The only thing that could lead the music industry to be "unhappy" with iTunes is that they want to charge more per download, whether it be through higher price-fixing or subscriptions that seem like a good deal, but aren't. That's all they care about. Unfortunately, the MPAA doesn't get to dictate how the market works, too bad for them. Unless Google starts off with an online music store a good bit cheaper than iTunes and somehow manages to completely kill off the iTunes store before jacking up the prices, the music industry isn't going anywhere, and neither will any new efforts from Google or anyone else.

Cheap, quality, legal music?

Will this finally be the long-awaited way of getting cheap, high-quality, portable & legal music? Music that I can play in Winamp using the MAD plugin? And will I be able to prove I own that music when the feds find an excuse to bust into my house?

It doesn't fit

Companies tend not to branch into totally unrealated unexplored businesses. Google is not in the subscription/sales business. It's in the advertising sponsored search business. Granted, neither was Apple, but they did already have at least some form of a paid software download business. Google has no experience at all in online sales.

My guess

It'll be like iTunes, but worse. I don't think that even the mighty Google can convince the record labels to do things the right way (no DRM, reasonable prices, etc.).

My only hope is that Google will focus more on the "indie" artist population and expose the world to some mostly unheard of music. That would be more in line with their style (and motto), but I'm not sure it will work (but I can hope!).

Utter lack of sympathy for the music industry

'The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services.'

Oh, really?

Well, I'm broadly unhappy with the music industry's desire to charge like wounded bulls for mediocre content and infest their media with single-platform proprietary DRM. I just *wonder* what sort of 'subscription models' the music industry is hanging out for. Guess what? I'm usually pretty supportive of google's enterprises, but if if I can't listen to the music on my iPod *and* my daughter's el cheapo MP3 player *and* my PowerBook *and* my work linux box *and* burn it to a CD so I can show it to my non-MP3-player-owning friends and relatives -- I'm not interested.

Oh, and I like Celtic folk, Afro-Celtic world music, blues, prog, electronica, choral and a bunch of other minority genres. I spent about A$70 on music last month, almost all from little indy labels. The Big Names of the music industry can take their overproduced teen manufactured product and stick it where the sun don't shine.

I hope that Google does this, and does so with...

I hope that Google does this, and does so with the same standards and aplomb that they have used for all of the other Google services. I like Google, not because of the do no evil clause, but because their services work, they work well, and the costs are... well, affordable.

If MS or the RIAA could find a company that works as well as ITMS or that works better than ITMS, they would have done so. Clearly, they are in need of a partner company that has both the technology know-how and the backbone to make it work. Google definitely fits in that category. I hope that if such a bargain is struck, that the *AA finds themselves holding on for dear life to the tail of a very BIG tiger....

The most likely outcome

is another flop, such as most of what google has produced in the last 18 months (it's sad when even the fanboys don't argue about it anymore..)

More possibilities for adsense?

I guess this will open up a lot more opportunities for advertising on gtunes.. Relevant-genre/artist music-snippet ads maybe?

Amazing

Hi hope it's as great as the Google Video store!!!

DRM is Unnecessary

What would happen if the **AA allowed Google to launch a music/movie service *without* DRM? The vast majority of material on legitimate services like iTunes is available DRM-free on the p2p networks and usenet. But people still use iTunes because it's more convenient and not legally risky.

Would iTunes or any other legitimate music/movie service be *less* successful without DRM? I don't think so. Which begs the question: what's the **AA's business case for DRM?

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

You are familiar with MagnaTune [magnatune.com]? No DRM there, and they have a "Why we are not evil" link on their page.

how to keep the RIAA happy...

The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing

All Apple has to do to keep the industry happy is rearrange that to "price fixing".

Free market suppply and demand

Let's take away for a second all format and technical questions for a moment, ans let's suppose that their format play nicely on/with other players; i.e. A from iTunes is equivalent to A from Google. Let's look at the problem from an economic perspective.

Say you have two songs available A and B. A is in high demand and B is an oldie which sells low volume.

on Itunes, A and B are sold for the same price: 99c
On Gogles Music Store (GMS), A is priced at $1.19 and B at $.79.

If I am a consumer, I will always buy from the cheapest source; so I will buy A from iTunes and B from GMS.

Now if you are Apple or Microsoft you understand this very quickly and you want to make you formats incompatible so that A from itunes != A from GMS. In economic terms you remove all substitute products.

What I would like to know is how somebody like Google with no hardware penetration will overcome this. THey sure as hell are not going to use Micosoft's tech, and Apple won't play fair.

So what's left for Google? A new proprietary DRM format as they use for their videos atm.
I don't know about you, but I can *bear* watching videos on my computer rather than iPod/PocketPc whatever because pf the screensize advantage, but I sure as hell enjoy most of my music on the go.

Sounds to me like Google is brewing their own little digital equivalent of Sony's stillborn UMD medium for PSP movies.

Oh, Google please hire some designers for your media store, Google Video is a disgrace.

Alright!

Crappy fidelity audio files with a poorly organized search interface. And the general internet public can upload any homemade crap they feel like it. I can't wait!!

What we need...

is for someone with billions of dollars to just buy the rights to all content and develop a massive content delivery system to give it away for free. And ponies... ponies for everyone.

Alternative?

The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services.

Good luck with that. How many millions of people have iPods? If I could get the yahoo music service onto my iPod, I'd pay for that subscription, just as a way of exploring and heading >30 seconds of songs. I frankly don't buy much music from itunes or anywhere, because I can't hear it first. I'm not going into a store, and I don't listen to the radio. So... where does that leave me? Occasionally browsing the itms and buying on the strength of a 30 second clip, occasionally hearing something during a movie or while (rarely) driving and getting it, or buying something on a personal recommendation from someone.

As for fixed pricing, big woop. I can see why Apple wants the fixed pricing, but I certainly don't care. If they want to charge $3 for the latest manufactured pop crap, go for it. I'm already not paying $.99 for it, now I can not pay $3.99.

Don't buy it

The whole article is based on the musings of one analyst, who also put out a "buy" order on Google. That's it. One guy's parsing of an alleged meeting between Google and some music people.

While Jobs may be committed to 99 cent songs on iTunes, I just don't see how they would stick to that if Google was really serious about this, and I imagine Apple would know.

I expect a denial from Google in the next couple days.

Poor Music Industry

Awe, look at that... THEY don't like price fixing! I feel soooo sorry for them. Not.

DRM Free Music?

All the artists on http://www.mvine.com/ [mvine.com] receive 50% of the after tax revenue for downloads, and all the music sold, in Ogg Vorbis and MP3 formats, is free of DRM. There are also many free music videos to download too.

The critical question..

Will music from Google work on my iPod?

If not, it's a non-starter.

-jcr

Yes But

Will it play on iPod?

This is sort of a delicious irony because I remember in the 90's the big question about any computer system was "Will it run MS Office?"

From another article:

'The Public is broadly unhappy with the price fixing and lack of subscription options at the non-existent Music Industry Digital Music Store and likely to support iTunes.'

I should hope not!

As a rabid fanboy of both companies, it would tear me apart to have to choose!!!

Streaming Radio ?

how about them providing streaming songs over Web ? or something like radio where they could set up a whole Web2.0 thing with several people with similar interests listenining and tagging and shouting on songs being played ? just add 'adsense' around a bit..and thats it.

Google Radio (TM). I said (predicted) this first here !

Google video

Knocken' the ITunes store dead!

No wait - poor design, confusing DRM non-DRM, different pricing - it's so simple!

Google-bomb.

I actually like iTunes.

The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services.

Call me crazy, but I actually like iTunes. I like that all the songs are $1. I like their selection, the interface, how easy it is to get what I want on my iPod, etc. I don't want to pay more for music. I stopped buying CD's a long time ago and it is the $1 price point that got me to purchase music again. If it goes up I'll do what I did with CD's years ago and stop buying music again. The last thing I want is a subscription service. Honestly, who here wants a subscription service for music? Raise your hands.

Now ask me how much of my time I waste worrying about the music industry only making a crap-load of money rather than a whole shit-load. Their whining about "mean old apple and fixed pricing" is enough to make a person sick.

Can I repost my wishlist?

1. A selection of music *better* than what can be bought on amazon.com (on CD) - it should have stuff that is out of print - particularly if it is out of print but was once available on CD.

2. Let you redownload music you've bought for no charge. (emusic.com has this)

3. Offer lossless downloads - this is particularly important because if I wanted to switch to a non Apple player in the future I would want to be able to reencode from the raw PCM and not have to do any transcoding (or worse be locked into, or even theorecticeally have my music orphaned by Apple)

Until these issues are fixed I only buy from emusic.com (for price and -APS encoding) or on CD (small price premium for freedom, if I can't find what I want on emusic.com which has a hell of a lot of stuff)

Probably wrong

As described, this would be the first time that Google would be getting money directly from the masses. I don't think selling music themselves is enough of a feature to justify the hassle for them. I think it's much more likely that they'll stick with the search step, and pass customers to vendors who are willing to give them commissions. So you search for a song (by lyrics, title, performer, composer, etc.), and you get a list of results, each with links to places you can buy the song.

It's possible that Google will do a store eventually, but I bet they'd start by getting a lot of customers going through their site to other stores, like they did for maps originally (with Yahoo and Mapquest as options for the actual map), and stocks (with a number of options for the quotes).

Can someone set up an "Analyst Watch"

I'm going to start asking these people if they really believe it's going to happen or not, and quit just sticking a question mark at the end. Really, either say what you think will happen, or don't. You're meant to be the experts who make predictions, not me, so quit asking me the questions.

They have competition

If they can compete with allofmp3, I'll consider it.

Uh, did this guy talk to the music industry?

Anyone who claims "The music industry is broadly unhappy with the...lack of subscription options" needs to actually talk to anyone in the music industry. The fact is that no one really knows how musicians or labels (independents or majors) are going to get any money at all from rhapsody or napster. This is partly because the PRO organizations (BMI, ASCAP) have not figured out how to collect the mechanical royalties from a subscription model. In fact, many people speculate that when they do tally up the mechanical royalties and send the bill to Real Networks, rhapsody will simply shut down because they won't have charged enough to cover the cost. Same thing with Napster. Apple will never offer subscriptions on iTunes until there is a concrete royalty scheme from the PROs, and Google would be stupid not to wait as well.

Slashdot, News News for nerds

'nuf said.

To Organize the World's Information?

Uhm, how does this relate to their core business again? Seems like they're going willynilly all over the place, trying to get into anything that can make them marginal revenue to justify their superhigh stock valuations. I thought they said they weren't going to do that, in their stockholder's manual [com.com]. Motly Fool had a prescient article [fool.com] on them today.

Music industry just admitted to a felony

Competing companies admit they met and discussed setting prices. That's a felony in the United States.

And the investigation just started. [guardian.co.uk]

Re:Will we be able to search by humming a tune?

Please tell us about how BSD and Solaris will help with this.