Monday, May 09, 2011

Google's Music Service Will Be Announced Tomorrow and Is Expected to Be Similar to Amazon Cloud Drive [Unconfirmed]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/#!5800231/googles-music-service-will-be-announced-tomorrow-and-is-expected-to-be-similar-to-amazon-cloud-drive

AllThingsD is reporting that Google's long awaited Cloud Music Service will be unveiled tomorrow at Google I/O. That's not too surprising. What's a teensy bit surprising is that it's expected to be pretty much what Amazon Cloud drive already is.

Reports had previously pegged Google with loftier intentions for their music service (think streaming music like Rdio or Spotify) but it looks like Google will have to settle and just act as a 'music locker' where users users can upload their songs to the cloud and stream them down to their devices. Which is what Amazon Cloud Drive already does. The problem for Google is that they don't sell music to users. Amazon does. However! One advantage that Google is expected to have over Amazon is that they'll launch with 20GB of free storage (as opposed to Amazon's 5GB).

It's sorta sad to see record labels get in the way of a potentially game changing cloud music service. Jamie Rosenberg, who oversees digital content and strategy for Google's Android platform, said:

"Unfortunately, a couple of the major labels were less focused on the innovative vision that we put forward, and more interested in in an unreasonable and unsustainable set of business terms"

We'll see what happens tomorrow. [All Things D]