Google Music for Google TV? Android Driven Means Probably Yes

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Published on Tuesday, 29 June 2010 06:35

Insiders have told the US Wall Street Journal that Google is getting ready to roll out a music download service tied to its search engine later this year, followed by an online subscription service in 2011. Speculation has it that the new music services will be married to the Android operating system - which  would allow users to click, download, and listen to songs on their Android-based devices and is potentially going to be the first cloud-based music subscription service with web storage and stream right to a mobile device - and perhaps TV. This likely means the service will cross over to Google TV in the near future - which would allow viewers to purchase music via their big screens in the living room - opening up a plethora of opportunities in the tCommerce space.

The recorded music industry is desperate for new solutions to create revenue, and Google Music on Google TV could be an interesting option for them - not only for selling downloads, but also possibly merchandise, video, tickets, and more. I imagine watching the Glastonbury festival (brilliant on a big screen in the living room rather than a lean-forward hard chair small PC experience)  in a few years, like I did this year...  and be able to buy merchandise, music, maybe even tickets for next year. Perhaps I could even buy a song and push it to my wife's Android phone, or my own, from the cloud. Or push a video clip for an affordable price, via the cloud,  to my sister's Android device in Canada... of her favourite Canadian band playing at the world's most famous music festival.

Is it an evolution of Google Listen or something new which we wrote about at Google TV - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at #io2010 with the Android, Flash and Chrome Show.  Or is it a new prospect all together?

More from the Wall Street Journal:

Google's push into music retailing is likely to be welcomed by music labels that are increasingly concerned about Apple's dominant position among U.S. music retailers. Apple accounted for 28% of all music purchased by U.S. consumers in the first quarter, according to NPD Group.

The recording industry has long sought a counterweight to Apple's growing clout, but rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. remain far behind with about a 12% share each, according to NPD.

The first phase of Google's music service is expected to be a Web store where users can buy and download tracks, music industry insiders said. It will be tied directly to Google's search engine, so that people using Google.com to look for a particular group or song will be served a link to the company's music store, according to people familiar with the talks.

These people also said the download store would be an "interim" step toward what is expected to be a more ambitious cloud-based subscription service compatible with mobile phones built with Google's Android software. A cloud-based service would enable subscribers to stream music directly from the Internet to their mobile phones, so that users wouldn't need to store music files on their devices. Google recently provided a glimpse of a Web-based music store within its Android Market, which sells apps for phones built with Google's Android mobile software.