Google Music Downloads To Go Ahead Without Sony Or Warner

An anonymous reader writes "Google has sent out press invitations to an event on Wednesday where it's expected they'll unveil their long-rumored Google Music download service. CNET reports that while Google already has an agreement in place with Universal, talks with Sony and Warner Music Group are still in progress, and won't be finished by the time Google Music launches. 'The negotiations between Google and the labels by and large have not gone well for either side. The labels are eager for a serious iTunes competitor to emerge and believe Google has the technological know-how, money, and Internet presence to give iTunes a run for its money. ... Yet, the company is once again launching a major part of its music service without acquiring licenses and this may serve to widen the rift between the company and some of the labels. '"

Comments

Google should just buy the RIAA!

[ksd1337]

The RIAA is relatively small. Google should just buy the entire thing.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[MichaelSmith]

Do you mean "buy the whole music industry"?

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not?

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[TaoPhoenix]

"Do you mean "buy the whole music industry"?"

Yes.

That would pulverize the current attack dogs when all those lobbyists are owned by the (relatively benign) Google.

Just suppose? Google gives out free songs. In return for its other deals.

Then the Smarms on Washington would be crushed.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[MichaelSmith]

The music industry consists of musicians and they won't deal with google unless they want to.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[Tyrannosaur]

i sure hope this is a troll and not someone *that* misinformed...

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[lister king of smeg]

"The music industry consists of musicians and they won't deal with google unless they want to."

no not really, the artists are not the ones in control of the industry, the labels are in control and they are run buy businessmen not musicians. If it were run by musicians the artist would actually make money. the only musicians who make money are the top few mega stars gaga, bono, etc, most are gypped by the industry because the labels can bs them. the mega stars only make money because the labels are afraid that they will switch to one of there competitors.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[MightyMartian]

The music industry consists of large media conglomerates who own labels that hold artists under contract, and those labels can be merged, shut down and sold at the whims of the corporate masters.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[jd2112]

Do you mean "buy the whole music industry"?

Wouldn't buying a record label go against thier "Don't Be Evil" motto? Sure, some of the things Google has done in the past have been kind of questionable but running a record label is about as evil as you can get.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[KingAlanI]

you're getting blasted by cynics/realists for this, but...
Are you saying "Google Records" would be just as threatened by indies as the RIAA is now?
One can be rather optimistic about alternatives to the traditional music business model.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[KingAlanI]

maybe Google could run an enlightened record label, but keeping the large-scale business muscle that indies all too often don't have.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[thunderclap]

The music industry consists of musicians and they won't deal with google unless they want to.

no it doesn't because most sold all their rights for lost of money. If google buys the big five and it made it through the regulators, the artists who didnt play ball would be out of luck. But Satan would sooner ice skate on the frozen lake of fire before that ever happened.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[MrDoh!]

If Google offers an easy way for bands to host their own content (Google Music and Youtube) without a label, allowing people to search for music (that's doable), and splitting revenue for ad sales when people listen/watch, then...
Do you need labels anymore?
In the old days, wasn't most of their job distribution? Hate to break it to the music industry, but I think the Internet has that aspect neatly taken care of.
Promotion? For a new band? That's not the winner/runner ups of the latest Idol/Factor show? hmmm...

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[Anonymous Coward]

The music industry consists of musicians

No it does not.

But the musicians indeed don't have to deal with Google, just like they don't have to deal with the record industry. In fact, it would be awesome if all of those musicians tried to produce independently. We wouldn't be spammed by overpriced crap from talentless hacks who were only propped up by the publishing industry.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[Anonymous Coward]

NO, the music industry does NOT consist of musicians. The *musician* industry consists of musicians. And they won't deal with the *media* industry, unless they absolutely are forced to.

And it's the *media* industry (remember: nobody needs "media" anymore since the Internet) that tries all this shit.

Don't offend us musicians, who were just as much abused by the media industry, by comparing us to those criminals.
Thanks.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Running a record label is "as evil as you can get"? Really? Compared to, say, Blackwater, Halliburton or Monsanto? Get some fucking perspective.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[Anonymous Coward]

The RIAA has no power as to whom Sony or Warner does business with. You know this? Don't you? Or is this another knee jerk comment from a Slashtard who doesn't really understand what the RIAA's place is in the music industry?

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, some of the things Google has done in the past have been kind of questionable but running a record label is about as evil as you can get.

So now Google is evil due to the actions of companies not under their control and made at a time before they existed?

That does clear things up, I always assumed Googles motto only applied to Google.
My Bad!

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[tehcyder]

And it's the *media* industry (remember: nobody needs "media" anymore since the Internet)

So why don't all the poor downtrodden musicians just see out their contracts with their record companies and sell/give away their stuff on the internet?

Oh, that's right, it's because they'll make fuck all money compared with becoming a major media star.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[tehcyder]

running a record label is about as evil as you can get.

Grow up.

Re:Google should just buy the RIAA!

[hesaigo999ca]

OMG, they should, and maybe even buy EMI...oh wait, too late, they got beat on that one....they could have saved billions on copyright royalties...!

Google has a major problem

[CmdrPony]

It's their half-assed attempts to create new products, and releasing them way too early. It's not only with Google Music, it seems to be a company wide practice and can be seen with Google+, Google TV, their coding languages, even Android and quite much any product they put out. Gmail was put out with the same tactic, but it actually offered much more than competitors did back then (good amount of space and great interface).

However, every one of Google's recent products just are not offering anything new, anything better or anything more. In most cases it's actually completely reverse. What they offer is a lot less than competitors do. And yet they still continue the bad practice, and are once again starting a new service that offers significantly less. People will just lose interest and never try to product again. I suspect this will happen with Google Music, Google+ and every other product they put out with the same tactic.

Please Google, finish and polish what you start before releasing them!

Re:Google has a major problem

[Billly Gates]

Not only does Google put out products early but they cancel them quickly too. They are starting to hit HP syndrome where they quickly halt investments if it does not produce a sizable return in just a single 6 week quarter. the cost accountants are running the show in order to boast its shareprice. I have seen the change within the first year as anyone else has.

Google+ was declared a failure within 1 month. I mean come on! Gmail was not popular either at first and I bet if these accountants were in charge of Google back in 2007 gmail would have been canned within 60 days as well because it did not boast the shareprice as well.

I understand it is a business and needs constant 6 - 8 week growth spurts to bring a higher share price to make investors happy and justify the CEO's compensation, but they are killing the goose with the golden egg to quickly. Companies that start to do these things always end up being sorry later. Again, HP syndrome.

If I were a shareholder I would be tempted to sell. It still has a high price not to mention all these ventures that quickly open and close cost money and show a company that is acting frantically desperate.

Re:Google has a major problem

[icebike]

Your entire takeaway is based on google hate.

It is a company that throws a lot onto the wall and sees what sticks. You should have known that going in. Its what they do. It works for them.

They are good a shedding un-productive products, sidewiki, Buzz, App Inventor etc., instead of running themselves into the ground maintaining stuff that has no market draw and no hope of a revenue stream.

Google Music is New, Better, and More. Its also Different, easy to manage, and (soon) will have a revenue stream. I put my music in, its automatically on my devices, no cables. No asking Uncle Steve (rip) if its OK. It just works. One second after creating a playlist on line its on my phone. On my tablet.

I can buy or upload music from any source available to me, not just ONE. For free. How is this less?

Google Plus is showing every sign of being everybit as big as Gmail. Its a totally new concept. Its not facebook, its not myspace.

Its time for you to stop the hate. Use it or don't use it, but claiming their services are old, broken, or not perfect is just so misplaced and wrong. Go back and cable up your iphone to your macbook and sync your itunes.

Re:Google has a major problem

[nurb432]

Only danger about waiting too long for release is everyone moves ahead of you. In today's ADHD new shiny object world its often better to release *something* to get it out there in front of people, then refine it in version 2.

Re:Google has a major problem

[CmdrPony]

Google Plus is showing every sign of being everybit as big as Gmail. Its a totally new concept. Its not facebook, its not myspace.

How is Google Plus any different? They have basically copied every piece from Facebook, starting from the UI and going to features, games and frankly, pretty much everything. Only thing Google+ had at the time was better organization of target groups for your updates, which you could already do on Facebook anyway.

There is nothing new with Google+. It's a complete Facebook copy, with significant amount of less features and people using it (ie., it's completely dead place).

Re:Google has a major problem

[muon-catalyzed]

..Google's recent products are not offering anything new, anything better..

You do not need to offer anything better if you are an advertising company, Google owns internet advertising. Just like the those "TV products" companies that have a lucrative dedicated TV channel. /sarcasm

Re:Google has a major problem

[Hatta]

Please Google, finish and polish what you start before releasing them!

That would be the swedish thing they could do.

Re:Google has a major problem

[icebike]

it's completely dead place

Famous last words

.

Re:Google has a major problem

[d4fseeker]

Uhhm, what?

Google+ introduced Circles, shortly afterwards Facebook magically made it possible to share posts with only certain groups
This was one of the most-asked-for and never granted features before G+ came along!

Google+ used a top-screen-bar to keep easy access on your notifications, shortly afterwards Facebook introduced _THE SAME_ feature in a major redesign.

You gotta wonder... who copied who on the details. (Games, come on... it's pretty obvious that people who chat want to play games, that dates back to Usenet and IRC!)

Re:Google has a major problem

[icebike]

If I were a shareholder I would be tempted to sell. It still has a high price not to mention all these ventures that quickly open and close cost money and show a company that is acting frantically desperate.

On the contrary, it shows a company that has a lot of skill at judging what will and what will not add to their bottom line. It shows a nimble management.
G+ has not been declared a failure (except perhaps in your jaded opinion). Far from it.

Re:Google has a major problem

[LibRT]

"...if it does not produce a sizable return in just a single 6 week quarter" - ya, they ought to give their products at least an 8 week quarter!

Re:Google has a major problem

[CmdrPony]

Google+ introduced Circles, shortly afterwards Facebook magically made it possible to share posts with only certain groups
This was one of the most-asked-for and never granted features before G+ came along!

It was possible, it just wasn't as clear. I've been using the feature for years in Facebook.

And notifications? They have been there as long as I can remember. And they certainly weren't added only after Google+

Re:Google has a major problem

[Billly Gates]

When I log into gmail there is an ad saying g+ is going away, but your posts shall always remain. That shows they killed it without letting it mature.

I could be full of it but that, GoogleTV, and others show a history of quickly investing in things and releasing fast and then abandonding them. Maybe they only invest a small amount and see what sticks so the losses are not as big but you need a large budget to do large things sometimes.

Re:Google has a major problem

[KingMotley]

I put my music in, its automatically on my devices, no cables. It just works. One second after creating a playlist on line its on my phone. On my tablet.

This seems like what Apple has right now with iCloud, except apple also supports my receiver (Pioneer), my computer (iTunes), my TV (through Apple TV).

I can buy or upload music from any source available to me, not just ONE. For free. How is this less?

Because you can buy music from any source available right now for iDevices. It's not less, just late.

Re:Google has a major problem

[mdemonic]

When I log into gmail there is an ad saying g+ is going away, but your posts shall always remain..

I just tried logging in to the gmail web interface, and it said google BUZZ is going away, but my posts will remain.

Re:Google has a major problem

[icebike]

When I log into gmail there is an ad saying g+ is going away, but your posts shall always remain. That shows they killed it without letting it mature.

I could be full of it but that, GoogleTV, and others show a history of quickly investing in things and releasing fast and then abandonding them. Maybe they only invest a small amount and see what sticks so the losses are not as big but you need a large budget to do large things sometimes.

I can see I'm arguing with an idiot here.

Google Plus is not going away you moron.

https://plus.google.com/up/?continue=https://plus.google.com/&type=st

Re:Google has a major problem

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to Czech their work.

Re:Google has a major problem

[d4fseeker]

It was possible to exclude whole groups from seeing certain things or your wall post. Now it is possible to only include certain groups to a certain statement
Huge difference! Except if you've been using another Facebook than the one most of us have been... =)

I didn't mean notifications, but that large blueish bar that keeps sticking to the top of our browser window when scrolling down. That one certainly only appeared after G+...

Re:Google has a major problem

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Google+ was declared a failure within 1 month. I mean come on!

By whom? Certainly not anyone at Google. For whatever reason, they need—or want very badly—Google+ to succeed. They're going to great lengths to accommodate their last shot at breaking into the social networking scene. Only since the release of Google+ have they made a serious attempt to create a consistent visual "theme" across all of their services, and they're even reducing the functionality of their other services (e.g. the removal of the + operator from Search) to allow for Google+-related features.

Google's betting a lot on Google+.

Re:Google has a major problem

[hedwards]

It's not nimble, in most cases it takes quite a while for a product to catch on. The Colonel was selling and working on his chicken for years before it became a household name. Same goes for pretty much every major brand name item you can think of. For the most part they didn't start out being sold nationally or globally, the started out small before being sold on a large scale.

The problem with Google is that it's conducting the skunkworks out in public where people can see and doesn't have the confidence to persevere long enough to know if it's going to catch on. They canceled wave before anybody had any clue what it was for.

Re:Google has a major problem

[mdemonic]

Granparent was talking about g+, which made the mispronounciation rather non-obvious, though im glad you got a chance to boost your ego.

Re:Google has a major problem

[Skythe]

I agree with your notion for Wave - put out too early, cancelled way too early.

Re:Google has a major problem

[ScrewMaster]

They need to Czech their work.

Yep, rather than just Russian it out the door.

Re:Google has a major problem

[Anonymous Coward]

gimme a

mp3 player

for the music download.

Re:Google has a major problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a blatant lie. Looking at this guy's comment history filled with spreading lies about Google, please join me in welcoming the latest Microsoft shill to slashdot.

I can predict his next comment: Anyone saying anything critical about Microsoft is good but saying anything about Google is bad? Why the double standard? Waaa!

Re:Google has a major problem

[Anonymous Coward]

And Apple doesn't support my Android phone... What's your point?

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just music I care about. Not the labels.

I love music.
And the artists who make the music we love don't get paid enough by the labels anyway.

The music industry needs to change.
And that has to start by getting rid of labels and all artists just making their music available for download on sites like iTunes, Amazon and Google Music.

Re:Who cares?

[CmdrPony]

The music industry needs to change.
And that has to start by getting rid of labels and all artists just making their music available for download on sites like iTunes, Amazon and Google Music.

And who are you to tell the artists what they should do? If they are so concerned about that, they can do that exact thing already. But they value the extra services and funding labels offer them, and that's why they make deals with them. However, they are free to choose, already. In fact they are more free now than if you were to tell them how to do it.

Re:Who cares?

[icebike]

Well said.

When Apple, Amazon, and Google pry the distribution away from the labels, how much longer will those labels be able to control production?

When local bands start acquiring a following, will they be able to go "indi" via one or more of these outlets without signing anything but a retail agreement for distribution? Will they simply hire a recording studio to record and polish their tracks without all the contractual lock downs and indentured servitude the labels impose?

Re:Who cares?

[icebike]

If they are so concerned about that, they can do that exact thing already.

Not yet. Not in any realistic way.
Very few have been able to break thru the roadblocks thrown up by the labels.
This is changing before your very eyes.

Nobody is "TELLING" the artists what they should do except the labels.

Re:Who cares?

[jimthehorsegod]

And the artists who make the music we love don't get paid enough by the labels anyway.

Goodness, no - it's a wonder they can even scrape together the money to eat with...

Re:Who cares?

[icebraining]

Another problem is that artists sign up with one label, and end up with another. Did all the artists who signed up with Rykodisc agree to having their songs owner by Warner?

Re:Who cares?

[Miseph]

Many of them can't.

For most musicians, it ends up working out that they can either make more money on fewer sales by going indie, or make less money on VASTLY greater sales on a major. Those with little talent, lacking the ability to write their own songs and more interested in fame than fortune may be better served with the latter. Typically, the music I enjoy does better with the former.

Re:Who cares?

[Karlt1]

iTunes already allows that. If they really don't want to manage the contracts etc. CDBaby offers very reasonable terms to handle distribution.

Re:Who cares?

[ScrewMaster]

Another problem is that artists sign up with one label, and end up with another. Did all the artists who signed up with Rykodisc agree to having their songs owner by Warner?

Yes, if they didn't have their own lawyer go over the fine print first.

Re:Who cares?

[DinDaddy]

Well said.

When Apple, Amazon, and Google pry the distribution away from the labels, how much longer will those labels be able to control production?

If the report on Sideline is to be believed, the majors are also going to discontinue CD production at the end of 2012, leaving digital distribution as the only real way of selling music. If they haven't fostered some serious competition to iTunes by then, they'll be handing their ass to Apple.

I think their hatred of used CD sales has blinded them to that fact..

How can this work?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Wouldn't Apple have gone for exclusive deals?

Doesn't launching the product without licenses in place put Google in a terrible negotiating position with the labels?

Re:How can this work?

[KingAlanI]

even if Apple did want exclusivity (not sure), maybe the labels flat-out refused.

maybe if Google Music launches and things go well with just Universal on board, that would send a message to / set an example for Sony and Warner.

Re:How can this work?

[Local ID10T]

Doesn't launching the product without licenses in place put Google in a terrible negotiating position with the labels?

No. It sounds like a rather strong negotiating position for Google.

"Take the deal we are offering... or spend the next decade arguing with our lawyers."

Google has very deep pockets, and can afford to take on a long court battle. The publicity from such a case would be a win for Google even if they lost in the end.

Re:How can this work?

[Miseph]

It just means they can't sell music from those labels. If they are able to do decently well on sales in spite of this, it proves that customers are more interested in their distribution outlet than they are in the labels' music. That would be a pretty compelling reason for any labels not already on board to sign up sooner rather than later.

So no, not really.

Re:How can this work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't Apple have gone for exclusive deals?

Doesn't launching the product without licenses in place put Google in a terrible negotiating position with the labels?

That's why they killed Jobs. I'd be looking over my shoulder right now, if I was a SONY exec...

exciting

[Anonymous Coward]

google music is the next big thing! Just like google+ was so awesome...

weird reversal

[Spy Handler]

The labels are eager for a serious iTunes competitor to emerge and believe Google has the technological know-how

Normally, more competition = (lower price || better service)

Right now iTunes dominates and has no competition, for all intents and purposes. The record labels don't like that, since Apple is holding them by the balls and forcing them cheap 99cent pricing and other things. So they want more competition for Apple.

But if they get their way, and more competition appears, the record labels will be able to raise prices and make more money?

Re:weird reversal

[AntEater]

... and forcing them cheap 99cent pricing and other things.

Maybe it's just me but 99c for streaming 4mb of bits to my local computer seems a bit excessive. I understand that the artist needs to be compensated and there are production costs, but the effective unit cost for a download heads towards zero pretty quickly for any music that is even moderately successful. A downloaded lossy compressed copy of an album should cost, at most, around $5. Of course, the bloated pigs that run the RIAA member corporations would rather run the industry into the ground rather than recognize that the real value of their product has declined from the heyday of the CD in the early 90s.

Re:weird reversal

[DeadDecoy]

99 cents is really not that cheap. Consider a typical CD with 12 +/- 4 songs. You'd be paying about 12$ to store a couple of bits in the cloud. This is roughly the same price one could find at Walmart or Target, albeit with less of a selection. Apple has the record companies by the balls, not because they offer a cheaper service, but because now they're getting a significant cut of the profits while co-opting their job as content distributor. If artists can publish over itunes, they suddenly make the existing set of middlemen look redundant.

Re:weird reversal

[quantaman]

Apple and the labels are both still competing against free which factors into the price point. It will also be hard for a new competitor to charge more since people could just purchase the song for cheaper from Apple since a label probably doesn't want to withhold their music from a big retailer like Apple.

Re:weird reversal

[izomiac]

I would imagine they're holding out because they want Google to open a service that allows them to sell songs for > $0.99. That way, they have a far better position to negotiate a price increase with iTunes. OTOH, I'd imagine Google is resisting such a deal for a couple reasons. First, it serves the record companies, but is not designed to help Google (works just as well or even better if Google Music later goes flop). Second, it gives them no pricing advantage, and likely a disadvantage, thus ensuring an uphill battle in competing with iTunes.

Re:weird reversal

[Fjandr]

Fiber optic cabling should be cheap too. After all, it's just glass and plastic.

While I agree that the overhead in the music industry doesn't likely justify their current pricing, the argument to tie retail cost to delivery and raw content values is naive at best.

There's a lot of production effort that resulted in the original creation. Just because it can be reproduced for an insignificant amount after it's created does not mean the actual cost of creation is nearly zero. Additionally, any content creation is a gamble. The huge number of failures are subsidized by the much smaller number of successes.

There are two sides to every argument. That the content industries are predatory is not in dispute, but their position is no more or less extreme than the position that their content has a near-zero cost.

Re:weird reversal

[Anthony Mouse]

I suspect the problem is that there is no agreement that makes all the parties happy. Google's modus operandi is to sell at low margins and make it up on volume. The labels want to make more money from Google than they do from Apple.

The problem is that the natural compromise is for Google to pay more to the labels for each song but then sell them to the public for less. Google would love that because nobody is going to buy a song on iTunes for $.99 if they can get it on Google Music for $.79, and even if that meant near zero margins they could just make their money by putting ads on the website like they do for everything else. But the labels don't want that because they would just be trading Google for Apple as the dominant music store.

So the labels go in and demand that Google sell for at least what Apple is selling for, but that they pay the labels more for each song. And that's obviously a sucker bet because it's the opposite problem. Nobody is going to pay $1.19 for something on Google Music that is $.99 on iTunes, so Google would be stuck charging the same price but receiving a smaller cut. And why would Google want to accept terms worse than what the labels have shown they're willing to accept from Google's competitor?

Which leaves giving Google the Apple deal, which doesn't make anybody happy because the labels don't get any higher margins and Google can't differentiate their product through price competition.

Re:weird reversal

[hedwards]

Before I started boycotting the RIAA I was getting most of my CDs from deep discount for about $6 a piece and not buying if I couldn't find it there. I think the ends up working out to about $0.50 a track for lossless music.

Re:weird reversal

[JWW]

And that is why when I think about what Steve Jobs did to the record companies, I can't help but smile.

When it came to bringing the record companies to heel, he was extremely effective. And we all get to benefit from it.

I credit Jobs with getting rid of DRM on music, which was no small feat. It could well be his most important accomplishment.

Re:weird reversal

[ScrewMaster]

You'd be paying about 12$ to store a couple of bits in the cloud.

Rackspace is offering cloud storage for something like 15c per gigabyte. Storage is not the issue. Bandwidth is not the issue (especially if a Torrent-like swarming protocol were implemented for music distribution.) The issue is a once-dominant oligopoly that hasn't come to terms with reality.

It's beginning to down on your average music buyer paying ten or twelve bucks for a few megabytes of data and ending up with nothing but a few files on disc is a rip off. People were more vulnerable to overcharging when they were receiving a nice plastic jewel case with a shiny plastic disc inside. But now the vast array of middlemen, suppliers, and music stores has all but disappeared in favor of a bank of FTP servers. And those are dirt cheap, comparatively speaking.

Re:weird reversal

[Ramin_HAL9001]

But if they get their way, and more competition appears, the record labels will be able to raise prices and make more money?

Yes, because is not the record companies competing for customers, it is exactly the opposite: the customers are competing for content (music they love to listen to) in a sort of auction, and whoever pays the most money gets a "license" to temporarily listen to the music.

Apple is facilitating these auctions, but there is no competition so Apple can do price-fixing, which is good for consumers. If Google enters the market, then record companies can threaten to stop providing licenses to Apple and instead provide licenses to a corporation who is more willing to kiss their asses and hike-up prices. This is bad for consumers because now the RIAA is setting the rules of the auction, rather than Apple.

Fortunately, Google has been pissing off the RIAA instead of consumers, because they refuse to let the RIAA dictate terms to them. Score one for the consumers, and thank Google for that.

But I'll bet you anything ordinary people will overlook this victory on their behalf, and still think of Google as some evil privacy-infringing corporation.

Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[Twinbee]

Here's a hint to Google. If I can visit Youtube (or a similar music service) to see how good the music is before I buy it, and they make it fairly cheap (say 10p-£2 per track), I will be buying tons of individual tracks and enjoying it.

However, I want a single click, and download of the Mp3/video to my drive in non-DRM format without any fuss or hassle. That's the thing, and I imagine Google is one of the only companies non-evil enough to pull it off.

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[GuruBuckaroo]

You mean exactly like Amazon's music store?

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[CmdrPony]

Spotify (and iTunes, kind of) offer that functionality already.

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[Twinbee]

Three things:

1: Last time I heard, Amazon's music store isn't in the UK and many other parts of the world.

2: I don't think just *anyone* can put their music up for sale easily on Amazon's store. You have to go through hoops. I'm hoping Google will make the system universal so that anyone can sell their music almost instantly if they want to.

3: I browse videos more often, and Google will suggest other videos of a similar nature, making it easier to find ones you like. Videos are often more fun to look at anyway.

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[jimthehorsegod]

Three things:

1: Last time I heard, Amazon's music store isn't in the UK and many other parts of the world.

Erm... www.amazon.co.uk/MP3 ?

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[Asic Eng]

Or like Ubuntu One.

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[WrecklessSandwich]

You mean exactly like Amazon's music store?

Have you ever bought anything from Amazon's store? They do have the qualities mentioned above, but the actual audio quality is so atrocious that I could never justify paying for it. I'm no FLAC-loving audiophile, but being able to buy a non-DRM MP3 with no hassle isn't worth it when you're paying for an MP3 file with a bitrate of 128 or below.

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[Knuckles]

I just bought an album a few weeks ago and the mp3s were VBR with ~170-~205.

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bandcamp is that service. It's the only digital music service that I've actually used because all the other ones lack some of the features you mentioned.

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

2: I don't think just *anyone* can put their music up for sale easily on Amazon's store. You have to go through hoops. I'm hoping Google will make the system universal so that anyone can sell their music almost instantly if they want to.

It literally took me less than 30 seconds to figure out how, I as an average person, could get started creating an account to publish music on Amazon's MP3 store.

Given the amount of crap you can find in the Amazon MP3 service these days, I'm guessing the process is really as easy as Amazon makes it sound. Of course, none of this matters. Unless you win the lottery, any self-publishing system will probably not net you enough profits to pay for the effort (however trivial) of publishing.

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[blind biker]

At least in Finland, I cannot buy MP3 music from Amazon, from any of their stores (uk, de or any other).

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

No. Preferably without that useless special downloader program you have to use to actually get the MP3 files you bought from amazon.

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[GuruBuckaroo]

I've never used the useless special downloader program. Firefox seems to work just fine.

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

You must not have used Amazon in a while. Over the past year they started requiring the use of their downloader for more and more stuff. I stopped using amazon and started using rhapsody instead.

Re:Here's a chance to grab my money Google.

[RobbieCrash]

Or Canada. It's pretty much UK and US, as far as I know.

Amazon is good

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been buying and downloading cheap MP3's from Amazon for a while. Not sure why it isn't considered a "serious" competitor of iTunes.

Re:Amazon is good

[JWW]

What the record companies don't realize is that what they provide is no longer required in the era of internet downloadable music.

It is curious that they "want" another competitor for iTunes because they can't compete in the internet music scene. But eventually when Amazon, Google, and iTunes control all the digital distribution and all other distribution has withered away, why will there be a need for record companies. Why shouldn't Apple, Google, and Amazon get their OWN recording artists and cut out the completely and utterly useless RIAA middlemen?

I so want Google, or Apple or Amazon or all of them combined, to buy (via hostile takeover) one of the remaining big "record" companies. Then they can fire all of the management and show the surviving companies what companies that are really innovative can do in the music industry.

The RIAA is in the unique position of selling their goods to people who hate them. I do buy music through iTunes so that I have legal copies, although I do load the DRM free music on every device I have, which I know is not what they'd prefer. But I am buying music legally.

However, if they get SOPA passed and IMHO jeopardize the entire internet (which my job is based on), I will stop holding my nose while buying music through iTunes, and just stop buying music completely.

Re:Amazon is good

[ScrewMaster]

Why shouldn't Apple, Google, and Amazon get their OWN recording artists and cut out the completely and utterly useless RIAA middlemen?

While I agree with your point, keep in mind that the RIAA and the content cartel that funds them are not the same thing. The RIAA in the U.S., the CRIA in Canada, and similar front organizations worldwide are just attack dogs: lawyers paid to do what their lords and masters tell them to do. The RIAA is not a middleman: the likes of Universal, BMG, Vivendi and others are the middlemen.

Re:Amazon is good

[Arancaytar]

Their user interface sucks. Their download client is two years out of date (Ubuntu 9.10) and does not support 64 bit architectures; their browser-based interface requires downloading every file individually - and very carefully, because for reasons that only make sense to Amazon, your personal download link will only work once.

Apple is evil, but they always make it as easy as possible to buy from them.

Re:Amazon is good

[Anonymous Coward]

My serious competitor for iTunes is uTorrent.

Re:Amazon is good

[fa2k]

[Amazon's] download client is two years out of date (Ubuntu 9.10) and does not support 64 bit architectures[...]

Apple is evil, but they always make it as easy as possible to buy from them.

So it's easier to use a Windows client in Wine, requiring a 9-step process to install it?

Re:Amazon is good

[Dr_Barnowl]

This was not my experience recently (Ubuntu 11.10) ; I bought an album for my wife, and Banshee just queued the download of all the tracks, and told me when it was finished.

9.10 installs Rhythmbox by default IIRC. I'm not sure it's entirely fair to claim that a client is 2 years out of date, when it's part of a 2 year old operating system with a policy of tying major functional changes to the distribution as a whole, and only releasing bug fixes for older versions.

Re:Amazon is good

[Solandri]

I so want Google, or Apple or Amazon or all of them combined, to buy (via hostile takeover) one of the remaining big "record" companies. Then they can fire all of the management and show the surviving companies what companies that are really innovative can do in the music industry.

I don't think that will work. Look what happened to Sony. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Sony was synonymous with quality (if overpriced) electronics. Stereos, portable tape players, VCRs (Sony was on the side of the VCR in Sony vs. Universal, aka the Betamax case), etc.

In 1987, Sony bought Universal/TriStar and CBS/COlumbia Records. Compared to Sony Electronics, the revenue from these media companies was a drop in the bucket. But a funny thing happened - the tail started wagging the dog. The new Sony Pictures/Music Entertainment divisions began dictating to Sony Electronics, rather than the other way around. Have you ever wondered why Apple captured the MP3 player market instead of Sony, the inventor of the Walkman? It's because Sony Music insisted on any Sony MP3 player being crippled with DRM. The initial Sony MP3 players wouldn't even play MP3s - you had to convert to their proprietary DRM-encrusted format.

IMHO the problem is the people running these media companies. They're rooted in a dying business model, and too closed-minded to think of any other way to sell music/movies. If you buy the media company, you buy these people, and they will do everything they can to preserve the business model they grew up with, even if that means fighting their new owners.

These companies need to die while under the control of these people to really drive home the point that their business model is obsolete. Buying them and firing them won't work. They'll think they lost their job because some open-source twit who happened to run a successful Internet company had an axe to grind against them, and the remaining ones will fight even harder to "prove" that their old ways still work. Something like iTunes (or Amazon or GoogleTunes) taking over the market and driving these media distribution companies out of business and into irrelevance is exactly what needs to happen.

Re:Amazon is good

[gl4ss]

*Why shouldn't Apple, Google, and Amazon get their OWN recording artists and cut out the completely and utterly useless RIAA middlemen?*

why shouldn't you? it's actually pretty hard and there's 50 million people trying(the making the music popular part, _not_ the part about streaming and selling it over the internet, but actually making people want to do that). what they could do, would be to buy license holder rights to like, top 1000 songs ever made. but that would still just provide them with a good library and not what's hot tomorrow. buying music labels can be extremely risky business.

Re:Amazon is good

[Arancaytar]

I'll confess that my experience with Amazon's download client was limited to trying to install it on my system, but running into a "i386 architecture" error due to my 32-bit system, and giving up. It's possible that I could have fiddled around a bit and gotten it to work, since 32-bit applications can technically be made to run on 64-bit systems. The download client Amazon offers seems to be standalone, though - how do you get Banshee to work with Amazon?

GMusic Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

That is probably the name of it I bet, though this time I kind of wished they released it with full support, of everything they can get because peoples opinion will be formed almost immediadely if it's worth using or if they should stick with itunes. I thought they had a shot with Google+, but their idea of having a invite only for a SOCIAL network at start wasn't the brightest idea it allowed people to get annoyed by bugs and not have their friends on it before hooking everyone in.

Re:GMusic Beta

[Miseph]

I seem to recall another social networking site that started out as invite only and had very exclusive policies regarding who could join. I seem to recall the name was something like "facebook".

Wnd game?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The labels are eager for a serious iTunes competitor", OK, why?

So we can see competition and lower prices, unlikely.
So they can have a different pricing structure? If it's more than current iTunes, how many people are going to pay more?

Or do they just think, more selling options == more sales?
 

Re:Wnd game?

[arkenian]

"The labels are eager for a serious iTunes competitor", OK, why?

So we can see competition and lower prices, unlikely. So they can have a different pricing structure? If it's more than current iTunes, how many people are going to pay more?

Or do they just think, more selling options == more sales?

*shrugs* Possibly they wish to do to Apple what Apple did to Amazon with books . . . force a raise in prices because Publishers no longer have to accept selling at the lower price to sell their product. Personally, though, I don't see it. Apple had specific motives to get the publishers in a war with Amazon to boost device sales. In the digital music world I don't think the particular dynamics involved will apply.

Revenue

[SuperKendall]

I have been buying and downloading cheap MP3's from Amazon for a while. Not sure why it isn't considered a "serious" competitor of iTunes.

So do I, sometimes - but revenue wise I don't think amazon is even close to iTunes yet. The music industry wants two strong players they play against each other, not a giant player who dictates terms to THEM...

Re:Revenue

[LeperPuppet]

not a giant player who dictates terms to THEM...

Well, they wouldn't be in that position if they'd tried actually innovating over the last decade instead of running around shrieking about piracy. Instead they let another company monopolise their newest distribution channel.

If they want a strong competitor to Apple, they're going to have to play nicely with others and somehow beat Apple on prices or features, neither of which they're likely to let Google do.

Re:Revenue

[hedwards]

Them screwing up is no reason for the CEOs to suffer.

Re:Revenue

[ScrewMaster]

not a giant player who dictates terms to THEM...

Well, they wouldn't be in that position if they'd tried actually innovating over the last decade instead of running around shrieking about piracy. Instead they let another company monopolise their newest distribution channel.

If they want a strong competitor to Apple, they're going to have to play nicely with others and somehow beat Apple on prices or features, neither of which they're likely to let Google do.

They wouldn't be in that position if they'd had the wit to realize that the end of the shiny-plastic-disc era was upon them, and had worked with Shawn Fanning and Napster rather than suing them into oblivion. They had their chance to seize control of content distribution on the Internet ... and blew it. And what happens when industries miss opportunities like that is that they die. Unfortunately, like SCO, like every zombie flick ever made, these guys just keep coming back and causing even more damage because they still don't get it.

Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[Animats]

In the 1990s, Warner Music was the largest record company. Now they're third. Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch, Leonard Blavatnik, who bought it last July. If Google had wanted Warner Music, they could have bought it then. It sold for $3 billion (actually only $320 million in cash plus the assumption of debt) a few months ago.

Google probably doesn't want to own a record company. It would be a distraction.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[Baloroth]

Google probably doesn't want to own a record company. It would be a distraction.

Not to mention completely violate their motto.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[martin-boundary]

Not to mention completely violate their motto.

That didn't stop them when they bought Doubleclick. You know all that big brother advertising evilness Google is famous for? Doubleclick was well known for it.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[TheGratefulNet]

agreed.

to see how far the google fingers have dug themselves in to OUR network (the internet is supposed to be our network, not googles) install adblock and noscript (likely you already have these installed) and then block google's domains, googleapis, all the rest of the google domains. then clear cache and re'run' your favorite websites for a few days. see how much functionality that should be there is now missing?

this 'do no evil' bullshit was always bullshit and its still bullshit. they have their fingers in every main website and even some secondary ones, these days.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[LordLucless]

The internet is.

Stay off http, and google's virtually non-existent.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[CmdrPony]

Now a days internet pretty much is http.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[utkonos]

Just because a person has a Russian last name does not make them an oligarch. According to wikipedia: "Born in the Soviet Union, he attended University in Moscow. He emigrated with his family from Russia to the U.S. in 1978, and received a masters in computer science from Columbia University and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School in 1989. In the West, he is known as Len Blavatnik."

That is hardly the profile of an oligarch. Sounds more like an American who made it big. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oligarch).

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[ScrewMaster]

Now a days internet pretty much is http.

The World Wide Web is, and always was. But then again, the Web is just a specific set of protocols designed to serve the browser. The Internet itself just schleps packets from here to there, and there's a hell of a lot more stuff on the Internet than your browser will ever see.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[ScrewMaster]

Just because a person has a Russian last name does not make them an oligarch. According to wikipedia: "Born in the Soviet Union, he attended University in Moscow. He emigrated with his family from Russia to the U.S. in 1978, and received a masters in computer science from Columbia University and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School in 1989. In the West, he is known as Len Blavatnik." That is hardly the profile of an oligarch. Sounds more like an American who made it big. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oligarch).

True. But then again, he wasn't born here so that makes him a Russian Oligarch. Or something.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[complete loony]

Some of those things that will break are where google is hosting some often used Javascript libraries so your browser only needs to download them once. Or would you rather we go back to having each web site host their own copy that you have to download separately?

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[tlhIngan]

That didn't stop them when they bought Doubleclick. You know all that big brother advertising evilness Google is famous for? Doubleclick was well known for it.

They're also int he two most popular smartphones as well. They bought AdMob (thanks to Apple - iAds was a "competitor"), which is responsible for mobile based advertising. They're used in in-app ads (very popular on Android in order to actually make money on apps).

So it's not just on the Internet, but also your smartphone and how you use it. Heck, when Apple tried to ban all sorts of data collection for anything but ad providers (basically ensuring AdMob wouldn't get usage data), Google/AdMob filed anti-trust complaints.

Google is literally Too Big To Fail(tm). The loss of Google will basically break most web sites around the world.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[Anonymous Coward]

Doing a lot of web stuff successfully is not evil. What you then do with those things may or may not be evil. Thus far, Google has an excellent track record... which is why they're still so successful.

You'll notice that Microsoft has tried to do nearly every single thing Google has, and yet if they disappeared from the web, many of us wouldn't even notice. Because they suck and we don't trust them. If Google went evil, everyone would move away.

The web has virtually no barriers to entry, and there's always 20 competitors waiting to eat your lunch if you piss off your users.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[Imbrondir]

Google and doubleclick is offering an advertisement service that websites can optionally use. You know the same service type that probably funds 95% of free content out there. How is that associated with evil?

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[Anonymous Coward]

Uuum, Also remember that Warner is/was *controlled* by Edgar Bronfman jun., who before that, was mainly responsible for the success of Universal. It's all one tiny group of people, with the profits and actual power of the toilet brush industry and the ego and conscience of Ming the Merciless.

And too many dumb people falling for their false front.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and Google put a stop to basically all the evil stuff. They were only interested in the display ad network inventory, and the shady practices have stopped and the quality of ads has skyrocketed.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[tehcyder]

But then again, he wasn't born here so that makes him a Russian Oligarch. Or something.

No, that makes him a Russian. He left there in 1978, before the Gorbachev era, and so wasn't one of those who profited massively from the breakup of the USSR.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[Anonymous Coward]

Your statement is ridiculous. I think we are beginning to see a shift in how Google will do business. There was a reason why the founders have taken back control over Google. Google (I hope) are realizing) that their newest battle is owning/ acquiring content. So it is completely reasonable that like others they will simply buy content.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[Anonymous Coward]

Repeatedly downloading a 2K JS file on a modern ISP plan, or letting Google track me everywhere... Oh, that IS a tough one.

Re:Warner Music is owned by a Russian oligarch

[utkonos]

Exactly. People assume if you have a Russian last name and you're rich, that you are an Oligarch. Is Sergei Brin an Oligarch? No.

"popular but controversial music app"?

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA: "What could also aggravate record-company execs is a disagreement over a request by the labels' trade group to remove a popular but controversial music app from the Android Market."

Uhh.... anybody have an idea what app they're talking about?

Re:"popular but controversial music app"?

[Anonymous Coward]

MP3 Music Download Pro ... because it "encourages piracy".

Why negoitate?

[nurb432]

Just buy the bastards outright. ( tho trying to buy Sony would be tough, they are much larger than most realize )

Re:Why negoitate?

[Anthony Mouse]

Sony as a whole is rather large, but their music division is not that big.

The real issue is that nobody could ever buy all the major music labels and make it past the antitrust authorities.

Of course, they could just buy whichever one has the most attractive catalog and then fire most of the management and replace them with people with souls and then stop acting in lockstep with the rest of the cartel. I would love to see the reaction of the other labels if one of them suddenly started selling tracks for less than half the cartel price and giving new artists well-balanced contracts instead of bending them over. It would be like watching a corporation have a heart attack.

Sticking is the problem

[SuperKendall]

It is a company that throws a lot onto the wall and sees what sticks.

Nothing will stick if they will not finish it before it's out in public.

I was pretty interested in Google+ when it launched. But because I had a paid Google Apps account for my business, I could NOT use my business email account for Google+!! Madness for a major feature like Google+ at launch, to screw over your paying customers.

Now they support Google+ from an apps account. But you know what? I don't think I care anymore. And in fact because of that backhanded slap to a paying customer, I am totally migrating off Google Apps after this year.

You can't just throw random half-baked things out and expect the bake sale to go well.

Re:Sticking is the problem

[icebike]

Nothing will stick if they will not finish it before it's out in public.

You mean like Gmail, Maps, Search, Google Earth? Those all wore a Beta tag for years and years.

By any definition, I would say they have stuck.

I find it telling that you wanted them to allow your business on G+ from day one, and at the same time fault them for not testing and completing something before releasing it. Clue: They beta tested it with individuals to shake out the bugs and see if it works before unleashing it on businesses.

Then your get all huffy and stomp off because they didn't beta test on your business?!!???

Apparently they care more about the integrity of your business than you do!

Re:Sticking is the problem

[CmdrPony]

You mean like Gmail, Maps, Search, Google Earth? Those all wore a Beta tag for years and years.

Maps and Earth weren't developed in Google, they bought them off. Keyhole had been developing their product for years and it was fully finished and sold to companies too. Google bought them off and made it free for personal usage. In fact, they haven't really developed it all after it was bought from Keyhole. It was never in actual beta. Google Search was in beta when Google started, back in 1998.

Re:Sticking is the problem

[kiddygrinder]

i'm pretty sure it didn't have street view or 3d view when they bought it. they're still working on it.

Re:Sticking is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike the named services (Gmail, Maps, Search, Google Earth), music generally isn't as free (besides the business model that perhaps Pandora and Spotify use).

Therefore I doubt people will *pay* for beta music services.

Why not use Amazon to download music as an alternative to iTunes. It works on many apps and has cloud storage.

Spotify is well advanced and I can play it anywhere, but there catalog is also not as complete as iTunes I suppose. My far by favorite. I sold Pandora stock once I reliazed how far superior Spotify is.

Re:Sticking is the problem

[JohnBailey]

Therefore I doubt people will *pay* for beta music services.

But why not? DRM free, because who is going to bother with DRM these days. Linked into Android, Chrome, other assorted things. Why would people not buy the music?

Why not use Amazon to download music as an alternative to iTunes. It works on many apps and has cloud storage.

Well personally, the one time I used it.. Which was on the UK launch day..
1) Required a special music manager to be downloaded. Which I didn't like.
2) Only offered mid range MP3 quality. All my music is either FLAC or 320k MP3.
3) One shot downloads. So if anything happens to the music, tough shit.

Which is why I use 7Digital.
1) No application, just download a zip file with the album.
2) 320k MP3 files.
3) Download as many times as I like, because the purchase is tied to my account for as long as it is active.

Spotify is well advanced and I can play it anywhere, but there catalog is also not as complete as iTunes I suppose. My far by favorite. I sold Pandora stock once I reliazed how far superior Spotify is.

No service will ever be 100% complete. Because there is no global central clearing house for music where each one has full access. Go outside any country for music, and you run into problems with global distribution.

As streaming services become more established, they will get more content, because holding back from a sales opportunity is pretty stupid. Right now, they are a new scary thing for the music industry to contend with.

Re:Sticking is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

But because I had a paid Google Apps account for my business, I could NOT use my business email account for Google+!!

Did you sign up with a personal account as per their original rules? Clearly not since that would have worked and did for me. I too pay Google for Apps on my domain, and everything worked fine day one.

It's telling of your complaint however, when you bash Google for not testing their products enough, and in the very next sentence bash Google for actually testing their products.

I have no doubt Google is glad to see you go, and to take your mutually exclusive demands with you!

iTuned offers one minute previews now

[SuperKendall]

If I can visit Youtube (or a similar music service) to see how good the music is before I buy it, and they make it fairly cheap (say 10p-£2 per track), I will be buying tons of individual tracks and enjoying it.

Why not just use iTunes today? You can preview any track for a minute, which is plenty long enough for me to decide if I like a song or not. Then you can buy tracks as you see fit (usually).

Re:iTuned offers one minute previews now

[Twinbee]

Even if they supply non-DRM tracks, and they are below say 50p, iTunes is a mediocre player for the PC compared to something like Mediamonkey.

And I doubt they'd supply the rarer tracks I'd be interested in anyway.
And I bet they make you jump through hoops for anyone wanting to upload their tracks to sell.

Re:iTuned offers one minute previews now

[larry bagina]

iTunes has been DRM-free for years now. Mediamonkey supports the AAC files from iTunes. Apple licensed amazon's one-click patent.

Re:iTuned offers one minute previews now

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you buy music from the iTunes store without installing their POS software? AFAICT you can't. Which as a Linux user means I can't buy shit from iTunes even if I wanted to.

Really good question - answer, leverage

[SuperKendall]

"The labels are eager for a serious iTunes competitor", OK, why?

I think that's a REALLY astute question. What do they get out of this?

I think the answer is that with two large players to play off each other, the labels could demand a greater cut of sales then they get currently, saying they would otherwise dry up supply for one store or the other.

With just one strong player, cutting off supply ALSO cuts of sales for the labels, so they really have little leverage...

And in the end for the labels (or most companies), how much you can make in profit is a lot about the leverage you have.

A comparison you're going to hate

[93 Escort Wagon]

Reading this, and thinking about how Google+, Google TV, etc. have floundered so far... in a lot of ways, Google's attempts to move into new markets reminds me a lot of Microsoft's "strategic" moves over the past several years. I'm not convinced Google has an overarching strategic plan. A lot of their moves lately seem like "me too" decisions made without anyone really thinking very far ahead.

It's almost like the only thinking that went into this was "hey, we have lots of money; and that really seems like an area we should get into - where's the checkbook?"

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[izomiac]

It seems more like throwing a handful of seeds into a field and seeing what takes root. Starting all these side offerings probably isn't costing Google very much money, so if it fails it's no big deal, but if it succeeds then the profit potential is huge. They also create publicity for Google and ensure they keep a following of early adopters.

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[whisper_jeff]

I'm not convinced Google has an overarching strategic plan.

Of course they do - it used to be "do everything Microsoft does" but it's now become "do everything Apple does."

Sadly, I wish I was joking...

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[Animats]

Microsoft's "strategic" moves over the past several years...

The difference is that Microsoft stays with something until they dominate the industry. The original XBox lost money from beginning to end. Now Microsoft's game operation is profitable, and they and Nintendo are on top, Sony is in trouble and Sega is forgotten.

Recently, a Microsoft exec made the comment that Microsoft is happy with Bing's progress. They gained 4% market share in search last year, and are now at 30%. Five more years and they might pass Google. Once Bing passes Google. they become the "must be on" ad network.

(Take that threat seriously. Twelve years ago, the top search engine was Lycos, "the catalog of the Internet". Where are they now? Myspace and Yahoo have tanked. Microsoft is still here. The one-product companies haven't done so well. And Google is a one-product company - ads are 96% of revenue. Despite many attempts, Google has never had a second winning product that generates serious revenue. The free stuff doesn't count.)

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[93 Escort Wagon]

The difference is that Microsoft stays with something until they dominate the industry. The original XBox lost money from beginning to end. Now Microsoft's game operation is profitable, and they and Nintendo are on top, Sony is in trouble and Sega is forgotten

You seem to have come down with a bad case of selective memory. A Google fan could've made the same statement, just replacing "XBox" with "Android". However, in both cases, it'd be pointing out one success while ignoring multiple failures.

You can certainly argue "take that threat seriously", and we won't know who's right for another 4-5 years in all likelihood. But I remember reading pretty much these same arguments a few years ago when they launched the Zune - Microsoft was "happy with Zune's progress" as well.

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an apt analogy. Even riskier to say, it reminds me of the open source world -- lots of different projects, many of which lack good leadership and focus, often suffering from poor UI choices, and end up effectively dying after a short time.
 
Apple, meanwhile, chooses very few projects and tends to push very hard on them. They make mistakes, such as Apple TV (twice over), but I think their drive and focus tends to overwhelm the failings in their products to make them successful.

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[Anthony Mouse]

The difference is that Microsoft stays with something until they dominate the industry. The original XBox lost money from beginning to end. Now Microsoft's game operation is profitable, and they and Nintendo are on top, Sony is in trouble and Sega is forgotten.

The trouble is that XBOX is still on the balance sheet as a net operating loss because of the billions of dollars they sunk into it. All they've accomplished is to stop losing money year over year. They're still in a giant hole compared with having put the same money in US treasury bonds or whatever else you like. And there is every indication that going forward, mobile devices will become faster and start replacing consoles as gaming devices for ever more resource intensive games, which creates a serious question as to whether they will ever even make back their initial investment.

They gained 4% market share in search last year, and are now at 30%.

Bing's market share is attributable almost entirely to it being the default search engine in Internet Explorer. And Internet Explorer's market share has been on a slow decline for about a decade with no indication of stopping. Incidentally, what does it say about Bing that it's the default in Internet Explorer but has lower market share than Internet Explorer does?

The free stuff doesn't count.

The free stuff produces ad revenue. Is ad revenue somehow not money?

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[hedwards]

The problem with Google TV was in large part price. They mandated Intel hardware be used for components and didn't allow for non-HD devices. Which means that for people who are still using an analog TV they wouldn't even be able to connect it to the TV without an expensive converter.

I'd like to have one, but they really need to consider dropping Intel for ARM and adding some provision for people that are still using older TVs. Not necessarily for all the units, but at least have some models available.

I think they'll get it figured out because I think they've got some really good ideas. I'm sure that being more expensive than both Roku and Apple TV isn't helping things.

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly is Android a success?

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[adolf]

And there is every indication that going forward, mobile devices will become faster and start replacing consoles as gaming devices for ever more resource intensive games, which creates a serious question as to whether they will ever even make back their initial investment.

I personally believe that mobile gaming is overrated. I've been using mobile devices since Handspring was still around, and have also had my share of experience using relatively slick full-color PalmOS devices, various Apple iWidgets, specialized portable media players, and the like. (Fast forward through a lot of gear, and we conclude with my well-hacked Android device.)

And let me tell you: I don't want to game or watch movies on any of them, at least not in exclusion to playing on the BFT in the living room. When I'm gaming, I want other warm bodies to be involved. Even on single-player games: Whether the boy is helping me search a room in Fallout, or the wife is playing navigator/spotter in GT5, it's more fun with real people.

Playing games on a handheld is like doodling in the corner. It's fun, sometimes, but it's more socially rewarding to have others involved...even if that means doing something other than doodling.

I use my Droid for all sorts of different kinds of stuff (it is a very lovely little portable computer), but gaming on it has so far been limited to waiting at the doctor's office or similar. Gaming on it is a means to kill time, not so much a means of enjoyment. It's handy that I've always got it with me, but not really very much fun for extended periods.

For enjoyment, I want to sit on the couch with the PS3 (or maybe even the Wii) and physically relax a bit, or for more intense gaming I might opt for the superior performance and keyboard/mouse controls of my PC gaming rig.

Same with movies. I could watch movies on my Palm Zire 71 many years ago, and it worked well enough, but I just didn't ever really bother except as an experiment to determine its worth. It could also do a fairly wide array of console emulation, which was interesting, but not very fun as a practical matter: Around that time, I'd much have rather run a similar emulator on my original Xbox, and view it on the big Trinitron CRT in my living room.

I'm not hardcore enough to buy such things on release day, but when the next generation of consoles starts cropping up I'll certainly be looking at them and trying to figure out how to fit at least one of them cleanly into my budget within a year or so.

And, for the money, I'll -always- get more realism out of a console than I will a PC or a handheld. Always. (My Droid was $539 and its graphics suck, my first PS3 was about $400 and it did OK at the time, and my present gaming rig beats the snot out of a PS3 but it also cost $1750.)

And it shouldn't need said, but: As handhelds get faster/better/cheaper, so does everything else. And nothing else has any of the worries about size, heat dissipation, or power consumption like mobiles do. It therefore will -always- be cheaper to build fixed a gaming system than a handheld of equal worth.

Death of consoles? Please. This argument isn't as new as you think it is.

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[Ash-Fox]

How exactly is Android a success?

Here is the answer.

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[Anthony Mouse]

I completely agree that today's mobile devices are not a replacement for a console. But consider how they're likely to evolve over time, as the adoption rate increases. Imagine the Windows 8 lunacy but starting from the other end. You have your device that has all your data on it and you realize that it would be nice when at home to be able to plug it into a dock connected to your TV or monitor and get a UI designed for the bigger screen. The mobile device becomes a console as soon as you plug it in. You can play all your digital music on your home stereo, watch Netflix on your TV, use a full sized keyboard to type emails or documents, etc. One device to replace your PC as well as your XBOX. At that point the only advantage a console has is performance, which leads to this:

As handhelds get faster/better/cheaper, so does everything else. And nothing else has any of the worries about size, heat dissipation, or power consumption like mobiles do.

You're assuming that faster is always better, rather than there being a threshold level of performance that once reached allows the device to run a particular class of games. Think about it: How many new games really require more than a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo circa 2006?

On top of that, nothing says you can't have a docking station that uses the mobile device to read your preferences and files from but has its own, faster processor and memory, if that turns out to be a sufficiently large advantage. Think Apple TV or Google TV but running Android with a UI designed for large screens.

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[adolf]

Even though I mentioned it, you still ignore price.

In (just to pick some numbers) 2015, a game console costing $300 will have better graphics abilities than a $300 handheld, simply because non-mobile platforms don't have the same design constraints and goals that handheld platforms do.

As to speed: Yeah, sure. And, by God, I could play Crysis on my 7-year-old single-core Dell laptop, if I wanted to prove a point by doing so. But it's a far more enjoyable (and prettier) experience on my quad-core SLI desktop. Until games become absolutely photorealistic, the machines that run them will never be fast enough, and we're obviously quite a long way from that level of perfection.

And WTF would I want a "docking station" for, except to complicate my life? Who in the hell would want their personal telephone/pocket computer tied up playing games in the livingroom, especially if it takes extra hardware that is otherwise useless to make it worth doing? The only real practical gaming advantage of a dock over actual dedicated hardware (ie: a traditional console) would be having the same saved games available, but isn't that what "The Cloud" is for?

Count me out. When the kids are busy killing a rainy summer day gaming in front of the TV, I still want to be able to use my space-age battery-powered pocket computer/radio telephone to do old-fashioned stuff like, you know, earn a living...and this means not ever having it tied to a television that someone else is finding enjoyment from.

Handhelds are inherently very personal devices geared toward one person's use; a game console, on the other hand, is a social device, and intended to be enjoyed by multiple people at the same time.

The reason is simple:

"Yeah, sorry boss. I'd sure would like to get right on that, but the [boys are playing Tekken]/[wife is watching a movie] on my phone at the moment. Maybe I'll be able to leave and go work on your problem once they finish up." (This problem does not exist with a dedicated console.)

YMMV, but personally I think you're drinking too much of the Kool-Aid.

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[Elbart]

They mandated Intel hardware be used for components and didn't allow for non-HD devices. Which means that for people who are still using an analog TV they wouldn't even be able to connect it to the TV without an expensive converter.

Why support technology, which will be gone within the next few years? Who, in the home-user-segment, REALLY replaces a tube-TV with another tube-TV (are they still being made at all?)?

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[fa2k]

on a forum that 1)allows posts the size of essays and 2) is plagued by goatse, please don't post shortened links ;)

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[Anonymous Coward]

They hope that brand recognition will help with adoption. Look, another Google product! Except another Google product now means something from well known hypocrites like Vic Gundotra and Andy Rubin, so I'm not touching them with a 10 ft pole.

--
I'm an arrogant asshole, so I work for Google now.

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[Anthony Mouse]

Even though I mentioned it, you still ignore price.

In (just to pick some numbers) 2015, a game console costing $300 will have better graphics abilities than a $300 handheld, simply because non-mobile platforms don't have the same design constraints and goals that handheld platforms do.

And a $600 mobile device (which the phone carrier will subsidize down to $200) might have equivalent graphics, and save you from having to buy both.

As to speed: Yeah, sure. And, by God, I could play Crysis on my 7-year-old single-core Dell laptop, if I wanted to prove a point by doing so. But it's a far more enjoyable (and prettier) experience on my quad-core SLI desktop.

I never said there don't exist games that benefit from faster hardware. Crysis is obviously one of the most resource intensive games. And yet, you can still run it at 30+ fps on very high with a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo.

Until games become absolutely photorealistic, the machines that run them will never be fast enough, and we're obviously quite a long way from that level of perfection.

You're missing one of the considerations in game design, which is the current state of user hardware. Games get designed for the hardware that users will have. The developers aren't going to design a game that will run at 5 fps on half their customers' hardware. They could make games that are completely photorealistic today, but nobody has the hardware to run them, so they don't.

Or let's put it a different way. The XBOX360 is from 2005. The Wii is from 2006. Even if newer consoles are released over the next few years, the installed base of people who only have the existing consoles will be large enough that developers won't make a substantial number of titles that require the faster hardware until the bulk of their prospective customers actually have faster devices. A 2014 mobile device doesn't have to beat a 2014 XBOX, it only has to match a 2005 XBOX and it will be fast enough for enough recent games that plenty of people will put off buying a newer console until there are a larger number of games that require them. And then the mobile devices become part of the installed base and developers see to it that their new games run well on them.

And WTF would I want a "docking station" for, except to complicate my life? Who in the hell would want their personal telephone/pocket computer tied up playing games in the livingroom, especially if it takes extra hardware that is otherwise useless to make it worth doing?

I say "docking station" but if you prefer it could just as well be wireless.

Let me put it a different way: It's a console, perhaps made by Apple or Google, that integrates with your mobile device. There is no reason you would have to take the device out of your pocket. It doesn't stop you from using it while your kids are playing games. It doesn't stop your kids from playing games when you take your phone with you to work, because they have their own phones.

The advantage is that it has all your stuff on it. If you go to your friend's house and use his console then you still have all your music and video, all your saved games, all your user preferences, etc.

Storing it all in "the cloud" is lame. Your media would have some crap DRM that only lets you play them on a fixed number of devices to stop you sharing your cloud password with The Pirate Bay. If you have 1080p videos and you're in a place with a 10Mbps internet connection then you can't stream them from the cloud, but you could play them over wifi from a device in your pocket. If Sony's servers get hacked and Anonymous deletes all your stuff or your private files end up on Facebook, you're SOL. If you have all your stuff in the Sony cloud and you buy an XBOX, you're SOL. The cloud is hype from cloud vendors.

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[adolf]

So. Let me see if I've got this right:

First, that your argument about money is based on the lie that is a contract subsidy.

Second, that your argument about speed is circular: Faster hardware is not necessary because games do not require faster hardware because faster hardware is not necessary.

Third, you're somehow assuming that I don't need to leave my house to earn a living, but that might be OK even if folks want to watch a movie, because:

Fourth, you're figuring that I want to buy every member of my family a $600 handheld device, because doing so is somehow better/cheaper than a Playstation.

Did I get all of that right?

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[Anthony Mouse]

The carrier does not allow the user to avoid the subsidy. If you want a mobile device, you pay the monthly fee and you get the subsidy. And you want the mobile device whether you can use it to play games or not. So even the subsidized cost is not an incremental cost; the user will pay it whether they use the device to play games or not. Think about it this way: If you buy a mobile device that you can use as a console, you can use it to avoid buying a separate console. If you buy a console, you can't use it to avoid buying a separate mobile device.

you're figuring that I want to buy every member of my family a $600 handheld device, because doing so is somehow better/cheaper than a Playstation.

Parents buy their kids phones. It's not a new thing. So same as above, if you already have it then it doesn't cost additional money.

Second, that your argument about speed is circular: Faster hardware is not necessary because games do not require faster hardware because faster hardware is not necessary.

Are you even trying to use logic? A causation cycle is not a circular argument. Chickens cause eggs. Eggs cause chickens. The fact that there is a cycle does not disprove the existence of chickens.

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[adolf]

A subsidy comes with a contract. I'm unwilling to entertain a contract for a $600 device that is easily broken or lost.

I buy my kids phones, sure: But they're not $600. They're just phones.

Re:A comparison you're going to hate

[mjwx]

You seem to have come down with a bad case of selective memory. A Google fan could've made the same statement, just replacing "XBox" with "Android". However, in both cases, it'd be pointing out one success while ignoring multiple failures.

Android, multiple failures?

I dont think you know what that word means, either of them.

Android went from strength to strength to become the most prolific mobile OS's out there. In the console world, Android is more akin to Nintendo, The Xbox and PS fans put it down, said no-one wanted to buy it and it sold like hotcakes. So much so they are looking to release a new console whilst Sony and Microsoft continue to count their losses hoping to be back in the black within a year or two.

Also the GGP is vastly overestimating Bing's market share, estimates range from 9-11% and most of that is at the detriment of Yahoo.

Lossless Audio Purchases?

[BinaryTB]

Label or no labels, I'll purchase from Google if they do the following:

1. Allow lossless music purchases
2. Allow purchased music to not count against your storage quota
3. Allow redownloading your purchased music "forever"
4. Price music well (by "well", I mean less than or equal to Amazon/iTunes/CDs)

#2-4 are probably a given, but I'm really not counting on #1 happening. Amazon doesn't do it and iTunes only has the ALAC* format. Google Music converts FLAC to 320kbps MP3 before uploading currently, so I'm taking that as a bad sign from Google for FLAC support. I'm just getting really tired of buying CDs and ripping them myself, so much so that my music purchases have gone down the last couple years**.

*ALAC is fine now that it's open source, but my Nexus S doesn't support that format natively. It doesn't support FLAC either, but Android 3.1+ added FLAC support, so I don't mind waiting for Android 4.0, which is coming "soon". Plus it was opened pretty recently, so I'm still waiting to see if how much software/hardware support it gets down the road.

**Remember that NFC chip on a CD case demo Google showed way back when (I think it was NFC)? i.e. tap the NFC to a reader device and Google will recognize the CD as a purchase and it shows up in your online account for playing/downloading. I wouldn't even mind that if Google went lossless, is that even available yet?

Re:Lossless Audio Purchases?

[reub2000]

Can you really tell the difference between an AAC/MP3 file encoded at 256kb/s and a FLAC file?

Re:Lossless Audio Purchases?

[Gaygirlie]

Can you really tell the difference between an AAC/MP3 file encoded at 256kb/s and a FLAC file?

No, he can't. He just likes to pretend to so he'd appear to be "above " normal people.

Re:Lossless Audio Purchases?

[BinaryTB]

Analogy time:

Can people really tell the difference between a game that runs at 60fps and 120fps? Most of the time, no, but for the times that they can (i.e. when the graphic rendering gets heavy), they wish they had forked over for a better graphics card.

Replace graphics with music and graphics card with lossless audio.

Re:Lossless Audio Purchases?

[sydneyfong]

And for the times they can't, they wish they hadn't forked over an extra $XXX for nothing.

Re:Lossless Audio Purchases?

[Keen Anthony]

Oh fucking hell, not this again. Some people can hear the difference even at 256kbps. The noticeable difference between lossless and lossy compression are a function of source fidelity, type of instruments, type of music, and the inherent characteristics of the compression format among other things, not to mention the hearing ability of the listener and his listening gear. Obviously, you're not to going to perceive a great difference between 256kbps and lossless D&B music when you're playing through a iPod that's got an analog connection to a cassette adapter to a car stereo with small paper cones in the speakers. If you're listening to jazz or classical or even live rock recordings, a person doesn't need golden ears to hear what compression does to a cymbal roll. For the last time, if you can't hear the difference, then you have no idea what the you're not hearing.

Re:Lossless Audio Purchases?

[reub2000]

If there where really that many people who could tell the difference between lossy compression and a flac file, I bet that amazon would be happy to provide it. 300-400mb for an album download probably makes no difference for them over a 70-90mb album download. But there is no demand, because current compression is good enough.

Re:Lossless Audio Purchases?

[BinaryTB]

If there where really that many people who could tell the difference between lossy compression and a flac file, I bet that amazon would be happy to provide it. 300-400mb for an album download probably makes no difference for them over a 70-90mb album download. But there is no demand, because current compression is good enough.

Agreed. Too bad though, looks like lossless is going to stay in the same niche as laserdiscs and blu-rays.

Re:Lossless Audio Purchases?

[Gaygirlie]

Obviously, you're not to going to perceive a great difference between 256kbps and lossless D&B music when you're playing through a iPod that's got an analog connection to a cassette adapter to a car stereo with small paper cones in the speakers. If you're listening to jazz or classical or even live rock recordings, a person doesn't need golden ears to hear what compression does to a cymbal roll. For the last time, if you can't hear the difference, then you have no idea what the you're not hearing.

My GOD, I'm INSULTED!

....I'd never use an iPod!

Re:Lossless Audio Purchases?

[Keen Anthony]

Then I apologize for my libelous comment. Accept my iPod. :)

Why buy?

[Weezul]

They could launch their own label. I suppose they kinda did with youtube.

Re:Why buy?

[CmdrPony]

What? Google didn't launch YouTube. They bought them. Just like Android and any other product they have, apart from search and AdWords.

Re:Why buy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they're buying out SoundCloud.com? It's like the YouTube of audio tracks.

Google needs to scour for sites like these

[future assassin]

http://www.ektoplazm.com/

Plenty of good music out there that doesn't cost much and produced by people who actually want to make music for music sakes.

Re:slashdot, the new gizmodo

[Miseph]

That started well before either of those events.

I suspect that with the death of Pope Steve it will slowly work itself out of the pro-Apple mentality, though certainly that event brought out all of the iFans for one last internet-wide hurrah.

Re:99c for streaming 4mb

[TaoPhoenix]

That's what I'll reply to.

It's not about the 4 megs, it's about the 99c/costs to produce the song, which presumably had at least $5,000 of studio overhead per album.

Have you listened to big label music lately?

[Torodung]

The music industry consists of fit, attractive dancers whose voices autotune well and they won't deal with Google unless they have to, which they will because they only care about the money and fame.

FTFY.

Re:Have you listened to big label music lately?

[CmdrPony]

The music industry consists of fit, attractive dancers whose voices autotune well

And what is wrong with that? I listen and look at what I find pleasuring. It doesn't matter if it's computer enhanced. In fact it's a little bit surprising to find such a hate towards augmentations on such a geek site.

Re:Have you listened to big label music lately?

[Hazel Bergeron]

Go away and read A Mathematician's Apology. Please.

Re:Have you listened to big label music lately?

[KingAlanI]

you're right, the tech (autotune and other slick production techniques) can work, and eye candy frankly doesn't hurt.

Sometimes, I'd like to pretend I'm a purist, but I'm not

However, some voices and some writing can't be salvaged.
I don't suggest _ignoring_ the well-regarded classics either.

Re:Have you listened to big label music lately?

[Xest]

"However, some voices and some writing can't be salvaged."

But does it matter?

Last time I heard the likes of Cee-Lo Green and Nicki Minge or whatever the fuck she thinks she's called on the radio I did actually wonder if I'd tuned into a show about cat torture.

More than anything it seems to be about who you know, not what your talent is in the music industry.

But I'm not even sure we can blame the music industry, you look at shows like X-Factor and the people that win fade into oblivion pretty quickly. Matt Cardell or whatever he's called who won it in the UK last year was shit, and I said he was shit each time my girlfriend had the show on, lo and behold, the guy's barely been heard of since he won it. Despite laws saying they have to be valid, I'm not sure X-Factor's voting system isn't rigged though, so I suppose it could be the music industry pulling strings there too.

But one things for sure autotune or not, if the music industry wants to pay you to be a star for whatever reason they'll do it either way, whether you're talented or not, and whether anyone actually gives a fuck about you or not. If it doesn't work out they'll just ditch you and replace you with generic non-artist #75646322 next week one way or another.

Re:Have you listened to big label music lately?

[KingAlanI]

Yes, the RIAA does still try it even when it doesn't work. I simply don't listen to those particular 'artists'/albums/songs

Re:Have you listened to big label music lately?

[Jawnn]

Most of us like to think that we have an at least average "critical ear". I know I do, and I can easily detect the application of effects like Autotune. I find them... fatiguing, but more important than their noxious aesthetic qualities, is the fact that "the music industry", i.e. producers and other decision makers, have decided for us that half-assed (at best) vocal performances, cheesed up with Autotune, are what we want to buy. I say fuck that. Crosby, Stills and Nash, for example, even at their peak, occasionally hammered out clinkers. When you're doing things that complicated, it happens from time to time. But when they were on, it was pure magic, and it was real - all of it. I'll buy that, all day long. I will not buy mediocre performances dressed up by technology, no matter how attractive the ass in the video.

Re:Have you listened to big label music lately?

[Torodung]

Nothing is wrong with that. I'm just pointing out that none of them are capable musicians, as the GP indicated, and that they're for the most part business people, and generally not artists with principles. Wanna borrow my "Owl City" album?

Re:99c for streaming 4mb

[MurukeshM]

$5k per album? Ok, I'll give you that. So, say they sell 1k copies, online. For break-even, that's $5/album. For $5 profit per sale, that's $10. But they don't sell 1k copies. They sell way, way more than that. Copying electronic media for online transmission probably has a fixed cost, independent of the album (since they make deals with ISPs), and probably should be accounted for in the 5k anyway, How do you justify their prices then? Or the ridiculous amounts that journals and their publication houses charge for e-copies of articles published by them? I think the articles business has teamed up with the MAFIAA, or atleast is teaching them a thing or two about how to screw over people.

How long will it run?

[Azure Flash]

When Google says "Jump!" I say "How high?" and Google answers "Nevermind, we're discontinuing Google Jump along with 9 other Google products".

Poor cost controls aren't my problem

[sjbe]

It's not about the 4 megs, it's about the 99c/costs to produce the song, which presumably had at least $5,000 of studio overhead per album.

If the recording studio can't control their costs, that isn't my problem. While I don't pretend to be an expert in the music industry, I am actually a certified accountant and I'm quite comfortable saying that everything I've observed about that industry indicates they aren't very good at cost control. While there is a meaningful cost to the production of an album, the overhead is fixed and can be amortized over numerous projects. The labor to produce the record is also basically fixed. It's fairly similar to R&D in that once it goes to market there are no more costs, especially with digital distribution.

Most of the costs in a record label should be in sales and marketing (rather like a software firm actually). The actual product development is rather inexpensive - maybe 10-20% of the total costs. The real expense is in promotion (and formerly in distribution) so the labels haven't really needed to care much about cost control in the actual studio time because it is tiny by comparison. That doesn't mean though that I as the customer should be willing to pay for their inefficiency.

Ask yourself this. Are you really willing to pay the record companies the money it costs you to market a record to you? Are you really willing to pay some extravagant rate for studio time? Personally I have no interest at all in paying for their marketing budget or other production inefficiencies. I'm pretty confident that even at $0.99/song, the margins are pretty fat for the record companies given that the marginal cost of sales done digitally is a good approximation of zero.

Re:Poor cost controls aren't my problem

[thsths]

> Are you really willing to pay the record companies the money it costs you to market a record to you?

What a strange question. Of course customers pay for marketing costs, at least the ones susceptible to marketing, who else should? That's why it is cheaper to buy the non-brand product, even if the content may be the same.

Re:Poor cost controls aren't my problem

[dissy]

I'm pretty confident that even at $0.99/song, the margins are pretty fat for the record companies given that the marginal cost of sales done digitally is a good approximation of zero.

Apple states they only get 10% of the song price for their overhead and most of that goes to the iTunes infastructure. There are some non-per-song costs involved that come out as well, but the remainder goes to the label.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/archive/index.php/t-27959.html

80-90% to the label is pretty fat indeed.

Here's an idea...

[Tastecicles]

...Why doesn't Google use its presence to promote unsigned artists and those "download friendly" guys such as Grateful Dead, Phish, Alan Hurtz, Max Creek... hell, why not mirror this? OK, hardly any of it is studio, it's 99.9% live recordings and capture quality is variable. To say nothing of the artists themselves (and some of them sound very different from their studio stuff - it becomes obvious, and sometimes painfully so, who has their studio vocals fed through a digital processor...

There's an obvious advantage to this - coverage. How many hits does Google get every single day?

Another question: how many people on here, reading this, had ever heard of etree before I posted the above link? I hope I did a good thing...

Larry Page needs to learn to say no.

[jamrock]

When Page took over as CEO from Eric Schmidt, he asked Steve Jobs for advice. After initial reservations, given the competitive animosity between Apple and Google, Jobs told him in so many words that Google's product strategy was all over the place, and they needed to stop releasing half-baked products and to concentrate on just five. He said that Google needed to focus on just a few things, and to polish them into world-beaters before releasing them.

And Jobs was absolutely correct. Google's "throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks" strategy is causing serious damage to their brand, and by killing off products which don't gain traction immediately they're sending the message that they weren't too committed to their success in the first place.

Jobs was many things, a significant number of which were downright despicable, but the one quality of his I really admired was his ability to say no to the multitudes of ideas percolating up to him, and to focus on just a few that he felt could be brought to fruition in a reasonable time frame. Google's attitude appears to be the diametrical opposite: the impression I get, and it's just an impression, is that Google treats all good ideas with equal priority, which ensures that the ones that actually have a chance of succeeding don't get the attention they need. They need to get out of the "engineer's playground" mentality and focus on a rational and sustainable product philosophy.

making money is not evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Their motto is "don't be evil" not "do no evil."

So, they can do a little evil and still not really "be" evil. But that point is moot because different people have different ideas of what "evil" means.

Most people consider things like murder, theft, assault, etc to be evil. Has Google done any of those things to you?

You think it is evil to provide an ad-funded set of services which subsequently become popular and widely used? Or perhaps it is evil to keep track of the data that other people voluntarily put on your free servers via your free services, and to use that data to filter out ads that the users probably won't care about?

You have a strange concept of evil.

Just purchase BandCamp already...

[Anonymous Coward]

The end of nostalga -- major lables release shit recordings anyway.

even on Windows...

[KingAlanI]

Even on Windows, I go with Amazon MP3 to avoid iTunes-for-Windows.
maybe the presence of Google Music would help convince Apple to address this issue...

MediaMonkey

[KingAlanI]

ah, so I'm not the only one who's heard of MediaMonkey. I love it. that it handles a wide array of audio formats is a big reason why. (MM is also way better at adjusting metadata and other organizing)

Name something RECENT, and half-baked

[SuperKendall]

You mean like Gmail, Maps, Search, Google Earth? Those all wore a Beta tag for years and years.

The ORIGINAL DAMN POINT was that Google used to be able to ship products that, though beta, by and large worked and they could be built upon. I used and liked ALL of the products you mentioned; though beta they worked very well and had a good feature set at launch that made them useful.

Fast-forward to the more recent years of what I can only now describe as utter clusterfuck. Wave, Google+ which (as I said) I could not use for MONTHS AFTER LAUNCH because I was stupid enough to GIVE GOOGLE MONEY.

Was anyone who paid google for anything unable to use Maps at launch? No? Huh!

You are living in the past, where sadly Google no longer is. They have lost the mojo they used to have of being able to launch a really usable beta, instead of firing crap at a wall to "see what sticks". Nothing is sticking!

I like Google, I have nothing against them. My moving away from them is because they have become inept and I have low tolerance for being screwed over as a paying customer.

Re:Name something RECENT, and half-baked

[Anonymous Coward]

My moving away from them is because they have become inept and I have low tolerance for being screwed over as a paying customer.

So, you consider not betatesting a *social network* with enterprise accounts as screwing over customers? Hilarious. You could have, like, I don't know, register your personal non-business google account? No? ...

Re:Name something RECENT, and half-baked

[Anonymous Coward]

Give it up, parent just destroyed your fud attempt.

dimeadozen

[KingAlanI]

http://www.dimeadozen.org/ too
also has lots of legally available live music
one may prefer BitTorrent to HTTP
uploads allowed unless the act has said they don't want their stuff there, as opposed to etree being optin-in.

Actually they will

[SuperKendall]

Google would love that because nobody is going to buy a song on iTunes for $.99 if they can get it on Google Music for $.79

Amazon Music says you are wrong.

It is often cheaper yet after years now it's not nearly as popular as iTunes.

The price (to some degree) doesn't really matter, remember that every song is free if you really want the lowest possible price. Users pay a fee based on how convenient you make getting the song to them.

Re:Actually they will

[Anthony Mouse]

Yes, obviously price is not the sole factor in purchasing decisions. The point is that if Google can provide an experience comparable to Apple then lower prices gives them the advantage. And you might notice that Amazon is still the number two digital music store, and that's without the iPod/iPhone hook that Apple has or that Google would have with Android, without a large promotional effort (I've never seen a commercial for Amazon music downloads), etc.

The reality doesn't matter anyway. What matters is what the record labels think would happen. They're still under the impression that you "can't compete with free." The idea that customers are not that price sensitive isn't consistent with their thought process. (Unless they're lying every time they say things like that, obviously. I mean, they are the record labels.)

Those arguments make no sense

[SuperKendall]

Even if they supply non-DRM tracks,

All tracks are DRM free AAC files, and have been for years. You can play them on a Zune.

and they are below say 50p

They are what the music companies would allow them to be on any service.

iTunes is a mediocre player for the PC

Then use Mediamonkey, once you down long the song you can use anything that supports standard AAC audio to play it back and organize it (still has all the of the needed ID3-like tags and such).

And I doubt they'd supply the rarer tracks I'd be interested in anyway.

iTunes has a far wider collection of stuff than anyone, and allows indies to publish. I'm not saying they will have everything but if they don't have it it's unlikely you will find it anywhere.

And I bet they make you jump through hoops for anyone wanting to upload their tracks to sell.

That's just silly. You really think Apple is harder to publish with than EMI? Good luck getting a contract on your next xylophone solo album at EMI.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

wait... what??

[smash]

If you or i were to let people download music from sony or warner, we get raked over the coals. And thats not even if we're making money from it by selling it.

What the fuck is google doing here, and how do they expect to get away with it?

Blockbuster mentality

[tepples]

But they don't sell 1k copies. They sell way, way more than that.

The recording industry has a blockbuster mentality. Some albums go platinum; others fail to recoup the costs of recording and reasonable promotion. The record label functions as a venture capitalist, hoping that the winners make up for the losers.

Mechanical royalty

[tepples]

it's about the 99c/costs to produce the song, which presumably had at least $5,000 of studio overhead per album.

A musical recording is actually two copyrighted works: the recording itself and the musical work on which its based. (Sheet music, for example, represents a musical work alone.) The songwriter and the songwriter's music publisher split a "mechanical" royalty, which allows the making and distribution of media from which the recording can be played by a mechanical device such as a player piano, phonograph, CD player, MP3 player, etc. National governments' copyright offices set this royalty; the United States, for example, has set it at roughly 9 cents per phonorecord, subject to increases indexed to the CPI. This rate does not go down as more phonorecords of a particular song are sold.

Fail!

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, *totally* failed at reader comprehension!

JWW said, in a nutshell, that Google should buy a label. Not the RIAA.

Re:Fail!

[ScrewMaster]

You, sir, *totally* failed at reader comprehension!

JWW said, in a nutshell, that Google should buy a label. Not the RIAA.

No, you failed. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. The GP said:

Why shouldn't Apple, Google, and Amazon get their OWN recording artists and cut out the completely and utterly useless RIAA middlemen?

My point is that the RIAA their ilk are not the middlemen, nor are they in charge of the middlemen. Quite the opposite in fact: they are just so-called "industry trade groups", collections of litigious fucks whose only real job is to promote the label's twisted view of copyright, lobby various governments for special favors, and sue their customers into oblivion. The music studios (who are the actual copyright holders, not the RIAA) are, in fact, the middlemen.

That said, I agree with the GP. Somebody with some semblance of scruples needs take over this industry. And I don't mean the likes of Apple Computer or Amazon either: neither of those outfits is any better than the existing "middlemen."

Amazon MP3s are *always* 256 kbps!

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon MP3s are *always* 256 kbps or better.

You're just a troll.

But they have android

[HalAtWork]

But they have android devices to push this on. That's a big audience. Now all they need to do is put out an android-based competitor to the iPod.

Not that it matters...

[rcharbon]

...unless Google does a better job with music than they did with books. Who buys books from Google?

Total comprehension failure

[SuperKendall]

Did you sign up with a personal account as per their original rules?

No, because I wanted to use my BUSINESS ACCOUNT to join Google+. Why would I want to create a whole other email address that NO ONE ELSE KNOWS to use Google+? The point is I want my business identity on Google+. The point is that for discovery reasons I would want to use the email address that everyone knows me by.

It's telling of your complaint however, when you bash Google for not testing their products enough

It's telling of your ability to read you say that I'm complaining about testing; when I did not mention testing whatsoever. I am simply saying the more recent products are just not READY for real world use. That implies so much more than testing, it's more about launch features and ability to use. It's about cohesion between all the various parts of Google.

I have no doubt Google is glad to see you go

I have no doubt Google doesn't care one way or the other. It's not like I will cease using all Google products, Google itself is still by far the best search engine, Google Maps still by far the best mapping tool... but it doesn't mean like you I am willing to stick my head in the sand and ignore real issues they have with new products even if I like some of what they do.

Sony is smaller than Nintendo

[tepples]

trying to buy Sony would be tough, they are much larger than most realize

Four years ago we had an article about Nintendo being bigger than Sony Pictures, Sony Music, Sony Electronics, and Sony Computer Entertainment put together. This is still true today: Google Finance tells me Sony (SNE) has a market capitalization of 17.56 billion USD, compared to Nintendo (NTDOY) with $22.71 billion. But both of them are tiny compared to XBOX HUEG companies like Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), or Apple (AAPL), all over $200 billion each.

Decide for yourself

[sjbe]

What a strange question. Of course customers pay for marketing costs, at least the ones susceptible to marketing, who else should?

Those who value being marketed to of course. Their promotion has essentially no value to me and I'm not willing to pay for that part of their overhead. Walmart makes exactly this argument to their suppliers. If the record companies want to spend huge amounts of money promoting the latest Brittany Spears album, that has no value to me whatsoever and I'm not willing to pay for that marketing. Some people are but you have to decide for yourself if you are willing to pay for a large marketing budget.

That's why it is cheaper to buy the non-brand product, even if the content may be the same.

The difference in price between branded and non-branded goods is significantly more than just the cost of marketing. If the cost of marketing was the only difference there would be no reason for anyone to ever buy a branded good.