Although not official yet, there is very little doubt in anyone’s mind that today, 10th may 2011, Google will launch its Google Music service at its I/O Conference later on today. Google’s service will essentially be the same kind of service already launched by Amazon Cloud Service last year to mediocre sales, however, Google’s version will not offer the ability to sell song directly to the customers, after talks with labels broke down late last year. According to a spokesperson from Google "A couple of the major labels were less focused on the innovative vision that we put forward, and more interested in an unreasonable and unsustainable set of business terms." So rather than putting the project on hold, Google will launch its music service with the ability to store up to 20,000 of your own uploaded songs, to then stream back to your desktop, Android phone or tablet, in fact just about any device that supports flash (I thought they said innovation? Wouldn’t innovation be HTML5? – Mikey) but don’t worry iOS users, your time will come.
In comparison, Amazons service lets you store a measly 1,200 songs (5GB), stored at mediocre bitrates. As Google do so often, they will attempt to beat Amazon in more areas then one, offering features like automatic playlists (Again, I thought they were innovating, sounds like Genius playlists to me – Mikey) Google should have this service available to the US market “within weeks” , yes the UK market will have to wait, for a change. Google will be handing out Music Beta invites later today to owners of the Verizon Xoom (but don’t worry you will also be able to sign up at music.google.com) A live blog will be available here once the event has begun (5PM GMT)