Unlicensed Google Music Arrives Tomorrow

Google is preparing to launch a test version of a new digital music service that will enable users to upload their music libraries to the company's servers.

 

CNET reported in March that Google was testing its music service internally and was ready to unveil the long-anticipated service. And that is what Google intends to do tomorrow at the company's I/O Developer Conference in San Francisco, according to Zahavah Levine, one of the executives in charge of getting the music service off the ground.
While Google and Levine have been negotiating to obtain licenses from the four largest record companies for more than a year, the test version of the service will launch without licensing. This is the same strategy that Amazon employed when it launched its cloud-music service in March.
"We're launching a beta service called Music Beta by Google that lets' users upload their personal music libraries to their own account on Google's servers," Levine told CNET. Users can "access those libraries anytime or anywhere from Web-connected devices," he said.

Levine said Android owners will be able to access their libraries when offline as well. While the service is still in beta, users will be able to join by invitation only. Initially, Google is prioritizing attendees of the I/O conference and owners of Motorola's Xoom tablets, which is the first device to use Android 3.0. After that, the company will then turn to ordinary users who request an invitation, which they can do at Music.Google.com. To access the service, users will require a browser that supports flash--that means no Apple devices--or on any Android device that's version 2.2 or higher, Levine said. The service will only be offered in the United States for the time being and while in beta it will be offered free of charge.

"This is a personal storage service that doesn't require licenses anymore than Sony and iPod or a hard drive requires licenses

--Zahavah Levine, Google exec

For more than a year, all the talk about cloud music, the term used to describe third-party computing, was about Google and Apple. Then Amazon beat both companies by unveiling a digital music locker service that allows users to store songs on Amazon's servers and then listen to their collections via computers with a Web browser.
What this appears to mean is that the labels are getting pushed out of the cloud. Any service with ambitions of operating a cloud service has to consider that there's an alternative to seeking licenses from the top labels.
The labels have insisted that offering most cloud music features would require licenses from them. But they didn't do much, at least publicly, to discourage Amazon from going out with its service and that hasn't sat well with executives at competing services. Some interpreted the labels' silence to mean that they didn't have any legal recourse against Amazon.

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