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.

Comments

Google's first serious misstep?

[yagu]

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?

[koweja]

Or Google can simply use the pricing model that they think will make the most money, even if that means doing what the industry wants. Google does what they want, Apple does what they want. Then we find out who is right and who is dead.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[Pieroxy]

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

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[BewireNomali]

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?

[metlin]

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.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[adinb]

You mean like http://www.savethemusicfan.com/, founded by the Nettwerk Music Group CEO Terry McBride?

With artists like Sarah McLachlan, Delerium, BT, Avril Lavigne, Bare Naked Ladies, and MC Lars, they're not exactly a small label. (But no, they're not Sony-BMG either)

And they are doing their absolute best to give the RIAA the middle finger--not only by founding this not-for-profit (and picking up families' RIAA legal costs and any possible fines), but by selling decent quality NON-DRM'ed music at their own download store.

Re:Google's first serious misstep?

[amliebsch]

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?

[n8_f]

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.

Dynamic Pricing Based on Plays

[RunFatBoy.net]

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/ -- Exercise for the rest of us.

I have a good idea?

[Bromskloss]

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.

what format?

[gEvil (beta)]

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?

why google will fail it

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

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

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

Prediction

[LividBlivet]

$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.

The Missing Link Found?

[TEMMiNK]

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

Step 1. Anything

Step 2. Google

Step 3. Profit!

Product Name

[alexhs]

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

I guess you meant Gtunes *Beta* :-)

OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

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

The music industry is broadly unhappy

[digitaldc]

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

Name?

[scarlac]

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?

[dougman]

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

Utter lack of sympathy for the music industry

[Froggy]

'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...

[zappepcs]

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....

Amazing

[Dr_LHA]

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

Re:DRM is Unnecessary

[typical]

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

Yes But

[Queer Boy]

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?"