Google Music is on its way... but where, when and how?

Has Apple's iTunes finally met is match? That's the question observers are asking as details about Google Music, the company's upcoming cloud music service, slowly emerge. Representatives declined to offer APC more information than what has already been released, but online discussion – fuelled by an exposé in US-based Billboard magazine last year – has provided a good idea of how it will work.

Music in the cloud
Google Music will use a cloud model to store music centrally and make it available for listening online – whether via a web browser, a mobile phone, or what could very well be a range of third-party desktop clients providing access to the online music library through a set of rich APIs.

At Google's I/O developer conference in May 2010, a startup called mSpot debuted a cloud music service that provides useful hints into how Google Music is likely to work. In mSpot's model, music is stored in the cloud and made available via Windows or Mac PCs or Android mobiles (web browser support would suggest the service also works on iPhones, but there is no explicit support for them yet). Users get 2GB free or can pay US$3.99/month for 40GB of storage.

mSpot takes a similar approach to MP3tunes, a streaming-music startup whose use of a 'locker' metaphor to stream content between devices copped it a music-industry lawsuit. That case reflects the complexities of streaming-music services, which to date have relied on users making copies of their digital music files and hosting them in the cloud.

Such services are essentially large-scale hosted storage plays, but Google Music will likely look further afield by hosting one copy of each song on its servers (technically, multiple copies of each song spread across servers), then selling and managing access to those songs – rather than selling users the actual files.

Speculation suggests Google Music would scan a user's hard drive and iTunes library, then enable access to its copies of whatever songs it finds. This could offside labels, who may see it as a stamp of approval for those who have pirated large quantities of music, and would effectively have their libraries legitimised through inclusion in Google Music – or it could be a powerful tool to help them go legit, says Ovum lead analyst Adrian Drury.

"Browser-based cloud music services work for the consumer," Drury explains, "but the question is whether they work for the rights owner or network operator. If Google gets its timing right [it can] leverage iTunes and find a technology solution to migrate users away from the vast 'grey' libraries of music that is not rights controlled, to legitimate services, to buy the support of the labels."

While the actual music files would be stored in the cloud, users' Google accounts would contain a cross-indexed list of songs in their libraries as well as personal playlists, recommendations, and the like. This wouldn't require any storage on the user's side, nor in the user's Google account; music would be streamed on-demand through Google's global network of servers. This model would support subscription-based plans like the US-only Rhapsody and Napster, which have succeeded in the US despite the failure of Australian analogues like Microsoft-Sanity joint venture LoadIt and defunct Destra.

Google would also need to provide a way for users to add music that isn't already available in the service – personal recordings, for example, or rare music that hasn't yet been licensed for digital download. Since Google already offers file-storage capabilities online, providing this space would presumably be simple by extending the Google Docs metaphor, which would enable sharing of music libraries as Google Apps users already share documents, spreadsheets, calendars and more.



The mobile link
Early reports suggested Google Music would launch before Christmas 2010, but other reports had it pegged as a major feature of Android 3.0 – which is still some ways off. Given the complexities of negotiations with the record labels, a later 2011 release seems more likely.

Google needs to take its time with Google Music – although not too much time, since Apple is by all accounts getting ready to breathe new life into Lala.com, the streaming-music provider it bought a year ago and quickly shut down. A Lala revival could come as an adjunct to MobileMe or as an extension to the iTunes Store, which already has enough information about purchased music and – through its iTunes Genius and Ping features – personalised information on individuals' musical preferences.

With Apple set on expanding its iTunes dominance into the cloud – and Google set on disrupting it – mobile handsets will ultimately decide which company succeeds. Music browsing, listening and purchasing would be built into the Android Market, with one-touch access to individuals' online collections. Google's search features and voice recognition – which is already supported by mSpot – would also ease music management by tying music results to Google searches, and allowing users to choose music using their voices. Tight integration would also simplify local caching of content to ensure it remains available even when mobile coverage is sketchy or non-existent.

Early mobile services have already proved popular: mSpot's Android client was downloaded over 500,000 times in its first two months of availability, and a ubiquitous Google Music client would put easy music access into the hands of millions of Android users.

Yet even if it's elegantly executed on Android-powered mobiles, the model could be a hard sell: customers like to control their music, which the likes of mSpot and MP3tunes don't challenge. Nokia, by contrast, has struggled to gain traction with its Ovi Music Store, and Vodafone Australia closed its MusicStation mobile-only music service on 10 October last year after similar customer apathy.



Social music
The launch of Apple's Ping service has brought social music enjoyment into the game. Imagine your online friends are listening to a particular song that Google Music knows they like, because its cloud service noticed they've listened to it five times this morning or every day for the past week – or because they explicitly said they wanted to share it with their friends. If you've signed up for updates on your friends' music habits, you can easily find out about new music they like and that you might too.

Privacy is an issue: Google's very existence is predicated upon harvesting customer information, and Google Music would be a gold mine of music preferences that could entice marketers to offer geographically-targeted ticket offers, live tracks, and merchandise. Google will need to walk that line very carefully.

Labels are also wrestling with the issue of previews: no matter how much you trust your friends, you'd probably want to hear the whole song before buying it. While Lala reportedly allowed this feature, it's not currently available. Billboard suggested Google has proposed letting users stream any song from its collection once, while Apple has reportedly struggled to get permission to provide a 90-second preview of iTunes songs rather than the current 30 seconds.

"Enabling full track previews would give Google a massive competitive advantage, not only for its own music service but as a powerful user proposition for its own social platform strategy," says Drury. "But for the music labels, a deal with Google, however slick the technology solution, is a deal with the devil. And Google will be trying a range of content and licensing strategies to get the labels to play ball; if Google had exactly the right approach, it would have already launched its service."

It may be a deal they're willing to make, however – if only to both recapture control over its music, and to support a viable competitor to iTunes, which currently sells over one-quarter of all music in the US and is the only viable online music option in most other countries. Music executives have expressed frustration at Apple's market power in the past, and Google may prove a suitable ally. It's early days for Google Music, but signs are that it's the best chance yet of legitimising cloud music services amongst those using mobiles to manage more and more of their daily lives.