Android Heads To The Record Store With Google Music
Posted: Thursday 17 November, 2011
Colin Miller
Google has been quite busy over the past few months, not satisfied with creating a brand new social network, the team at the Googleplex in Mountain View have been cooking up a music store to rival the likes of iTunes.
Google Music is a cloud based music service from Google, which allows users to store up to 20,000 of their tracks in the cloud for free and access them anywhere. Google is placing the challenge firmly at the feet of iTunes with their latest venture, tracks are similarly priced and Google already has the backing of three out of the four major labels. There are currently around 8 million songs available on the Google music store which is expected to rise to 13 million in coming weeks, although trailing iTunes by 7 million songs, this certainly isn’t a bad start.
To date, around 15 billion songs have been sold through the iTunes music store, making it the world’s largest music retailer. In order to compete, Google are offering a number of additional services and features to sweeten the deal in an attempt to coax users away from the familiarity of their iTunes accounts. Google will offer high quality downloads, free cloud storage and integration into the Google+ network so that songs you purchase can be shared with your G+ contacts where they will be able to listen to the entire track once for free and have the option to download and comment on the track.
With 200 million android devices activated worldwide, the Google music store, which is now live within the Android market, has a fairly large potential user base ready to take advantage of its new service. Offering artist exclusives is another method which Google is attempting to utilise to lure in potential users from other music stores - the Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam, Busta Rhymes and even Coldplay have all been named as artists who will be releasing material exclusively through the Google music service, not a bad roster for a fledgling music store to open its doors with.
Google is in the process of stamping its authority on the online social and musical worlds, with a concerted effort to emphasise social sharing by placing Google+ as the heart of its new image and services. There is a long road to travel for Google to overthrow iTunes as the citadel of online music however a bit of friendly competition certainly won't go a miss.
