Google Launches New Music Service: Music Beta by Google

Having realized the complexity of the online licensing process and failing to secure agreements with major record labels for the launch of its music service, Google follows in Amazon's footsteps by presenting a new project - an archival digital service on a non-licensed basis. The company presented its new offspring at the recent I/O conference on May 10 in San Francisco.

Launched in test mode and named accordingly Music Beta by Google, the service allows users to upload their music libraries to a personal online archive, from which they can listen to and download files on any Internet-connected device. The scheme itself is similar to Amazon's Cloud Drive, but with active use of the Android platform and several notable features. For example, there is an interesting Instant Mix feature that allows users to create playlists "to their taste" based on a single song. The program analyzes the characteristics of the composition and automatically adjusts a playlist with similar tracks from other users' music libraries. Another remarkable option is the ability to synchronize playlists across all user devices. Thus, playlists created on your mobile phone can be automatically transferred to your tablet or, say, Google’s online client. We no longer need third-party devices to transfer files, which is convenient, to say the least.

Currently, the service is working in beta mode, available only to residents of the United States, and functions on an invitation basis. Other users wishing to try the new service will need to request an invitation on the site music.google.com. Priority will be given to owners of the Motorola Xoom tablet and those who were able to attend this year's I/O conference. The volume of music that can be uploaded is currently limited to 20,000 tracks, which is quite a lot. However, the creators provide no comments regarding future conditions of use of the service. Fortunately, while in test mode, it is completely free.

To summarize the above, let’s highlight the main features of Music Beta by Google:

- Any Internet-connected device can stream music from the personal archive on the site. The content is only streamed, tracks from the music repository cannot be saved, although there is a caching system. However, devices and a new audio player based on Android are necessary to download and play cached streams.

- Users subscribed to the archival service receive free music from a number of labels with which Google has entered into exclusive rights agreements.

- All user music on each of their devices is presented in a unified format. This means that you will always see the same music list on any of your devices as well as in your personal online archive.

- The sound quality of streamed music can be very high - up to 320kbps, if the device and connection can support it.

It is evident that Music Beta by Google is certainly not the service that was anticipated in the original Google project. In this regard, the company's head of partner relations Zahavah Levine, who was in charge of negotiations with representatives of various record labels, spoke quite clearly at the recent conference.

Zahavah Levine: "With varying degrees of success, we conducted negotiations with various record companies, but some of them were more interested in their own profit than in the innovative project, demanding unreasonable and completely unacceptable terms of cooperation."

According to several sources, particular difficulties arose with Sony Music Group and Universal Music Group. Google's initial proposal was to create a music service on what is called a scan-and-match basis, where instead of uploading copies of the same track in each user’s archive, the service would scan users' music libraries, automatically selecting and attaching compositions to a centralized server. Payments would then be made to the rights holders, i.e., music labels. It's hard to disagree that from this perspective, Google's position is quite obvious: either you choose to cooperate with us, or we move on without you. So far, it looks like that's the case, but the company doesn't lose hope of eventually organizing the service to operate on a licensed basis.

Zahavah Levine: "A large segment of the music industry has done significant joint work, extremely important in addressing online licensing issues. We are, of course, still open to cooperation with representatives of music companies for new functional solutions. And we hope that this is just the beginning of a long and constructive relationship between music, users, artists, and their fans."

It seems, Music Beta by Google is indeed a very ambitious project, and above all, "keeping up with the times." We will watch its formation and development in the network. At the very least, in the near future, as promised by developers, the service will be supplemented with new functionalities and options. And with growing popularity, it seems, the prefix "beta" will fall away out of necessity...

Details: http://music.google.com/about/