Google’s I/O developer conference officially kicked off this morning with a keynote of several product and service announcements. The Pièce de résistance was the unveiling of Google’s long awaited cloud music service, called “Music Beta.”
Since Google couldn’t quite get all the licensing it needed from the major record labels, the Music Beta service launches today in the US with almost the exact same feature set as Amazon’s Cloud Player service that launched a couple months back. Essentially, you can upload your music files to Google and be able to stream songs on any computer or Android device. It’s a service type that’s been around for quite awhile, dating back to the old MP3Tunes Oboe Locker service back in 2006.
Still, it’s all about execution and Google is offering free storage space for up to 20,000 songs in music Beta. (It’s unclear if Google will limit via space or discrete song numbers yet, but 20,000 songs is roughly 60GB of storage.) It’s way more than Amazon’s 5GB of free storage. However, unlike Amazon’s service, Google’s Music Beta is missing the ability to sell songs directly to consumers at launch. To throw us a bone to help differentiate the services, Google is touting Music Beta’s ability to automatically build a playlist around picking a single song.
As a music fan, I’d be intrigued by the service simply because of the large amount of free storage space offered, but it won’t really revolutionize music consumption in its current state. For that we’ll at least need a subscription model that provides access to all the music without having to own it, ala Spotify.
The fact that it only works on Android phones and tablets makes sense given who the service is made by, but a little disappointing to the many iOS users out there. For them, we’ll just have to wait until Apple’s WWDC in June to see if they’ll one-up Google and Amazon with their music solution.
You can request your Music Beta invite here.
