Google prepping a new online music store to rival Apple, Amazon

Google is reportedly prepping an online music store to compete with rivals such as Amazon and Apple. The search engine company is presently in talks with record companies and is expected to announce its new music store by end of this month. Google is seeking permission from the companies to sell downloads and to stream purchased music to customers' devices.

According to The New York Times, Google's online music service may arrive before Apple launches iTunes Match, a similar cloud-based music store. The New York Times quotes executives who "spoke on condition of anonymity” that the new store were likely to be linked with the Music Beta, Google's existing cloud-based music store where users can back up their tunes online and stream to their devices. The Music Beta is presently available for the US-based users only. Music Beta was launched nearly five weeks after Amazon opened a similar unlicensed service, Cloud Drive.
Unlike the Music Beta, Google's new music store will actually sell music, on the lines of Apple's iTunes Music Store and Amazon's MP3 store. Reports also suggest that Google may go ahead with its new music store without backing of any record company. The search engine company may soon enter an agreement with EMI Music Group in this regard.
Google's latest foray into entertainment indicates the company's attempts to boost its revenue and sales by maintaining the popularity of Google. The search engine company recently had a successful run with its new social networking experiment Google+.
Apple earlier this month launched iCloud, a service that allows users to store music, photos and documents online from their iDevices such as iPhone and iPad. According to reports, the iCloud may soon feature movies as well.

source:   http://www.thinkdigit.com/General/Google-prepping-a-new-online-music-store_7755.html

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