Google is entering the on-demand streaming market with a rather lackluster offering

May 15, 2013 06:34 GMT  ·  By

Google is said to be launching a streaming music service at Google I/O, associated with the Play Store and Android. The company is also launching a separate service associated with YouTube.

Google has been working on this for years and it's already got a basic service, but on-demand streaming has been out of the picture until now.

Now, Google has licensing deals with both Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment for the Play Music service.

The search giant already had a deal with Warner Music Group, meaning all three major labels that control a large percentage of the world's music rights are now on board.

The new music service is said to be unveiled during the first Google I/O keynote. It will be fairly similar to Spotify, meaning it will be fairly similar to all other on-demand streaming services out there.

In fact, the only remarkable thing about Google's offering is how unremarkable it is. Rumors say there won't even be a free tier to get people enticed.

Instead, users will have to pay the monthly subscription from the get-go. If they do, they'll get access to all the music available for streaming, which should be comparable to all the other streaming services, on the web or on their mobile devices.

The offering is unlikely to entice current users of Spotify for example, but that's not Google's strategy. It's got a massive platform with Android so it could reach millions of people who have never subscribed to a music streaming service or didn't even know they existed.

Google already has a music cloud locker, enabling users to sync their libraries, and a music store akin to iTunes or the Amazon MP3 Store.

As for the YouTube service, it will be completely separate from the Google Play one. Google negotiated different deals for the YouTube one, mostly because the heads of YouTube and Android at Google couldn't work together.

YouTube may also go for a different strategy, with an ad-based service. It's unclear when such a service will be unveiled, but most likely it won't be at Google I/O.