What better way can Google go about answering the various recent jibes from Apple, such as refusing to allow Google Voice or Admob to work on Apple platforms? It just HAS to go into the music business and according to CNET, that’s what it is about to do.
The music business, in the form of the four biggest western record labels Universal Music, Warner Music, Sony BMG and EMI, has long wanted to loosen the grip that Apple has on its future. The record companies had a role for half a century as the only way that popular music could be distributed and in one fell swoop, as piracy threatened to completely sabotage this business model, iTunes came along and promised it sanctuary. But the price was that iTunes became a bigger distributor of music than any of the record labels had ever been.
And if they are not careful, the labels will slowly have their premium role in music squeezed out of them ‘ their margins and pricing dictated to them by Steve Jobs. So as soon as they recognized their role in making Apple and Jobs the King of music, they began trying to tear him down.
The simple expedient of offering the ‘same’ deal to as many operations that wanted it, both in online and mobile music, should have brought Apple to heel. But the public is a fickle master, and more and more iTunes is thought of as the bringer of music to the masses, not the record companies and it continues to stubbornly retain its market share. Apple, after all, gives people what they want. It doesn’t try to foist albums on them, it speaks up for DRM-free music and it keeps per track prices down. Or at least the consumer perceives it that way, and that’s the important thing.
So the emergence of Rhapsody, or Nokia Music Store, of Sony Ericsson’s PlayNow, a rejuvenated and legal Napster, and all of the other sources of online and mobile music, has barely touched Apple’s music dominance.
The powerful record labels must be careful what they wish for, and in dragging Google into the equation they risk replacing one online music master with another ‘ swapping Apple for Google. What they need is for Apple and Google to have a standoff and put some of the control of how online music is sold back in the hands of the major record labels.
But having said that, two masters will have less of a grip on the business than a single master, and the record labels must have gone cap in hand to Google the moment Android Market was released and asked it to create GoogleTunes or gTunes, or whatever this new service is going to be called. We know that they did much the same with MySpace and Facebook, also hoping that these would be the right platforms to launch against iTunes.
The first rumors that something like this was going to happen came out around 4 years ago, but the service never materialized. But with the rising success of Android and Android Market, it was virtually inevitable as Google has more and more gone up against Apple’s iPhone.
CNET reports that Google will launch a full on music service offering both downloads and streamed music as early as this autumn and at its I/O conference last month it already demonstrated a web based iTunes.
Google is said to have been courting the top labels since January and has been directing online searchers to streamed music services such as the one that Apple bought and closed recently, LaLa.
Google itself bought Simplify Media in May, which describes itself as a media sharing App which allows users to share digital music, photos and videos online, including media in their iTunes accounts. Simplify had already shuttered the service for new customers back in March and removed the App from the iPhone App Store, although this may have been as a result of negotiations with Google, rather than the more obvious guess that it had simply run out of money. A version of this software will now be built right into Android, Google said, when it announced the deal.
So this entire music shift at Google may be a race between Apple’s LaLa and Google’s Simplify to bring streamed services ‘ perhaps only music, but potentially video as well, to their respective platforms.