Google’s own-brand music service – the imaginitively titled Google Music – will be with us sooner than expected, according to the Guardian. The paper’s “sources in the music industry” claim that the new online music service, which is tipped to be a rival for iTunes and Amazon, will be available in just one month’s time.
We’d heard earlier this week that Google had struck a deal with EMI, while still in negotiations with the other big three music publishers, Universal, Sony and Warner. Universal is expected to be the next publisher to sign agreements with the Big G, while Sony and Warner are still a ways off reaching a deal.
Google Music is believed to work in the same way as Apple’s iTunes Match, scanning the user’s harddrive for tracks and then making the songs that it finds – both paid for and pirated – available to stream from Google. Music industry execs are reportedly on board with this idea, seeing it as an amnesty in the so far unsuccessful war against piracy.
Google are also promising a mysterious “twist” to the service, with Andy Rubin, the head of development for Android, saying that the service will have “a little Google in it. We won’t just be selling 99 cent tracks.” We’ve got nothing on what this twist could be, but if the Guardian’s sources are correct we only have until mid-November to wait to find out.
Source: The Guardian
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