Slashdot Mirror
Google Launching Music Service Without Labels
fysdt writes "Google Inc is set to launch an online music locker service to allow users to store and access their songs wherever they are, similar to one launched by Amazon.com Inc in March. And like the Amazon Cloud Drive player, Google music service is being introduced on Tuesday without any prior licensing deals with major music labels, following months of fruitless negotiations."
from old media, over me accessing songs I own from wherever I am, or any device I have.
"It's a reverse vampire...they....they crave the sun!"
I hear Apple already has a music service. They're calling it "iTunes". It'll never catch on, I'm sure!
Apologies for this expression I just Googled it and regret my wording.
Just meant to imply it would be a massive orgy of corporate interests and expensive litigation.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Presumably they have a legal opinion that they don't need a license to do this. In the US, fair use says you can copy your owned music to other media. That's not true in all countries.
Except that Google has the wherewithal to buy the music industry outright. The RIAA would actually have to sue and win (as opposed to litigating a smaller opponent into bankruptcy), which might be rather difficult, seeing as how these cloud-storage services merely give users the ability to store their own files for later retrieval and don't really facilitate piracy.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Google has been negotiating with the music publishers and the negotiations were described as "fruitless." This can only mean that the music industry wanted payment for every time a user plays music that he already paid for and Google didn't want to allow it.
So, in the end, we will see this service become popular and the industry will challenge this in court initially seeking injunctive relief and eventually "performance royalties" among other damages.
I, of course, anxiously await the legal tangle. Google is a hero for many here on Slashdot for various reasons. I still see them as a marketing company with their own angle and interests at heart, but I do appreciate the fact they are willing to fight for their cause rather than simply roll over and pay people just to stay out of court.
You're overestimating the music industry; while I'm sure that no one wants a long, drawn out lawsuit, Google sees about twice as much revenue than the entire recording industry*. (Plus, they've got a business model that doesn't revolve around suing their users.) I'm not sure that the RIAA's lawyers would be too eager to sue Google; it's easy to arm-twist a $2000 settlement out of a college kid, and if one or two of them do end up going to court, the RIAA can certainly outlast any private individual. However, suing someone bigger than you, who has an experienced in-house legal team, is a whole different ballgame.
* Gotta back up my claims. For the sake of this argument, "the record industry" doesn't contain indie labels; they are too fragmented to coordinate their power. That leaves us with:
Sony Music Entertainment: $1.33 billion
Universal Music Group: $6.14 billion
Warner Music Group: $3.49 billion
EMI: $1.65 billion
versus
Google: $29.32 billion
(all values USD, anual revenue, as listed on Wikipedia)
Sure, if by "worldwide" you mean UK, France, Germany, Austrialia, Germany.
Google is a US company that offers all of their services in the US and only search, maps, and mail outside the US. They do offer some extra services to other countries, especially UK, but they don't really care about the rest of the world.
It's a shame, but that's how it works for us non-Americans. Especially people from the third world like myself. I'm tired of getting snail-mail spam from google, for $50 worth of Adsense, and not be able to get, say, Google Voice. Or Local (even though google really wants my location in my android phone). Or any other service really.
Sure, they claim there are licensing issues, local laws, etc. That's all bullshit. It's simple: they're US based, and the US market is so big there is no need to expand to the rest of the world.
I don't expect to see this service enabled for any country south of the equator, except Australia.
Can other people see my music?
Then how will the RIAA know what I have there, what is the basis for the subpoena?
Also, how will the RIAA know when you obtained the pirated music? The statute of limitations clock in many cases is pinned to the last infringing act - so not only would they have to prove you had the files and obtained the music files through copyright infringement, they would have to prove that they were still inside the statute of limitations (three years for civil suits, five for criminal), which means proving you downloaded the music or shared it with someone else during a specific period of time.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Unfortunately, wrapping the brainfuck implementation of DoomII into an mp3 produces a dark eldritch chant that, upon playing in a dark room under a full moon, summons Cthulhu and ushers in an age of despair for 100 years. Plus or minus some if you use a bit rate less then 128.
Google has a ticket open.
Where's MP3.com right now? They tried this 10 years ago, and got shot down in court. What's different now?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Marvelous. Buying the law.
The future of music, with music labels crushed and Google dictating how musicians are paid, is bright.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The parent companies are bigger. That may seem like small difference,but Google and Amazon can afford 10 years of litigation. MP3.com couldn't.
Where's MP3.com right now? They tried this 10 years ago, and got shot down in court. What's different now?
I think the difference is that Google has unlimited money for legal defense.
As opposed to the present, with the public being crushed and the labels dictating how musicians are paid?
Or how many new people can be brought into the market. I never used iTunes because I didn't to have anything to do with Apple. But I'd give those others a look.
>>>remember when they had a 90+% hold on the PC market? ...Amiga, Commodore and IBM and the rest fractured the market.
There was never a time when Apple held that high share. The #1 selling computer of the late 1970s was the Tandy-Randy Shack 80 (TRS-80). In 1982 Atari 400/800 briefly held the crown. From 1983-86 the Commodore 64 dominated the market. And then finally the IBM PC/clones (1987 to present).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
If DJs use poor-quality encodes of tracks in your world, I don't want to live there.
Today is red jello day - all workers must eat all of their red jello. Failure to comply will result in five demerits.
There isn't any useful president from the mp3.com case because a "music locker" requires that people rip & upload the songs themselves, meaning it'll go into a long legal fight, and google has far more money than the labels.
In fact, if any label gets too uppity, google can simply buy them outright or coerce their owners. Warner Music's entire market cap is only $1.22B, meaning google could easily just buy them outright and terminate the upper management, legal team, etc. All the others are small subsidiaries inside much large companies that might see little benefit in tangling with Google.
I doubt EMI's owner Citigroup would tangle with Google, even though their market cap is 129B. Any bank likes keeping rich people happy. If they did, I'm sure google could launch a hedge fund to poach Citigroup's best quantitative analysis, then let the rest of the financial industry eat them alive. Sony and Vivendi (UMG) have market caps of 29B and 23B, respectively. I'd imagine their less vulnerable to talent poaching than Citigroup too, but you might still threaten some executive and board member positions by working through their larger stock holders.
A cheaper solution might just be threatening to provide lawyers for all the little people they've extorted money from by threatening to sue, a few $40k per year ambulance chasers could drag any label through thousands of expensive lawsuits for years.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
>>>Google dictating how musicians are paid
Welcome to the world 99% of the other wage-slaves have to deal with. Do you think WE get to tell our bosses how/when we wish to be paid? Of course not. The corporation dictates how laborers get paid, and there's no reason to think Musicians, Actors, Authors, etc should be any different. I figure in the future they'll all be paid by the Hour, rather than per sale.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Of course, anywhere Apple or Google goes, Microsoft has to follow. Poorly. Many of the most brilliant minds in the industry work at Microsoft. Too bad the upper management has a bad case of Apple/Google Envy and spends all their time chasing the latest shiny object instead of defining the future of computing.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.