14 DAY TRIAL // Google is said to be moving forward with its streaming music service and a new report shows some of the ideas the company has for the upcoming service. Google Music would be a traditional online store, just like iTunes, but would offer an optional cloud-locker service to hold all of your music.
Google has been working on an online music service for at least a few months. While the company has shared some details, there are a lot of questions about the service supposedly set to launch this year.
According to a report by Billboard, Google is taking a hybrid approach. It doesn't want to launch a pure online streaming service, which have proven popular but not very profitable, or a simple digital music store like Apple's juggernaut.
Instead, it plans to marry the two. The Google Music store would offer paid downloads, very much like iTunes, though the store would be accessible from the web and possibly through an Android app on mobile devices.
This part is fairly standard, where Google's approach differs is that the bought music can also be available online for streaming from a cloud-locker service which is said to cost just $25 per year.
This way, users could listen to the songs they bought on any internet-connected device. What's more, the songs would be available offline as well on mobile devices.
But the really interesting part is that Google wants to make all of the user's music available online. The user's hard drive would be scanned and any music file, which Google has licensed as well, will be made available in the cloud locker.
The files include legally purchased tracks, ripped songs from a CD and even from peer-2-peer networks. This last part seems the most interesting, but Google says it's key to getting people to use the cloud-locker.
These are just Google's proposals to the music labels, so there's no guarantee that this is how Google Music will look like. It is very likely that some things will change.
Apparently, though, the labels are pretty OK with most of Google's proposals, including the p2p tracks, and the discussion now focuses mostly on the financial aspects. The songs on Google Music are expected to sell for the same amount as iTunes tracks.