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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. '"
The RIAA is relatively small. Google should just buy the entire thing.
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!
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?
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.
You mean exactly like Amazon's music store?
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
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.
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?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
"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.
"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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
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?"
#DeleteChrome
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?
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.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
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 ?
What? Google didn't launch YouTube. They bought them. Just like Android and any other product they have, apart from search and AdWords.
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.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
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.
I just bought an album a few weeks ago and the mp3s were VBR with ~170-~205.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
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.
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.
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.
Them screwing up is no reason for the CEOs to suffer.
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.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
At least in Finland, I cannot buy MP3 music from Amazon, from any of their stores (uk, de or any other).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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.