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Amazon Beats Apple & Google to Cloud Music Service

by Mahesh Kukreja on March 29, 2011

Amazon Cloud Music

Last year, Google talked about the Google Music service. Apple is also rumored to be working on Cloud based service which it will be announcing with the release of Apple iOS 5 later this year.

But Amazon has beaten both of these Tech Tycoons with the launch of Amazon Cloud Music Service. Amazon has announced Cloud Player, a music player that lets users upload their music to Amazon’s servers and play them via the web or Android.

With the Amazon’s Cloud Player service you can now save your MP3s to Amazon Cloud Drive. It also has an option to upload music from a hard drive to a user’s Cloud Drive. Users are given 5 GB of free storage but can get 20 GB if they purchase an album through Amazon. It’s $1 per GB after that.

Cloud Player comes as a web-app as well as an Android app. Both players allow users to upload their music, create playlists and organize their music. And because it’s a cloud-based platform, users can access their music and settings from any compatible browser or an Android device.

Currently sites like Grooveshark and Last.fm provide cloud based music service. With the launch of Amazon’s Cloud Music, I think these might be coming in trouble. Amazon’s Cloud Player will certainly face stiff competition when Google and Apple launch their own streaming music services, especially given Google’s control over Android and Apple’s control over iPhone and iTunes.

Read more about Amazon’s Cloud based Music Service.

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Apple iTunes gets a competitor: Google Music

by Mahesh Kukreja on June 5, 2010

About 2 weeks ago, at Google I/O, Android 2.2, Froyo was introduced by Gundotra. But, that was not all. Gundotra also announced a new section in the Android Market — Music. Much details about this new project were not disclosed at that time.

Googel Music

The name of the new service may have been found through a new logo that was hosted at Google’s server.

The logo was hosted here. But, it has been taken down by Google and now you’ll find there a 404 Error page.

Google Music will be an over the air service for Android devices — hear a song, purchase it, download it automatically to your Android device.

The service will make use of Google’s recently-acquired Simplify Media’s technology, offering a desktop app that will give you access to all DRM-free media on Android devices remotely, service similar to that of iTunes.

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YouTube and Universal to launch premium music site

by Mahesh Kukreja on April 9, 2009

Universal Music Group (UMG) and YouTube announced plans on Thursday to launch a music video website featuring artists from the world’s largest music company.

Universal, a subsidiary of France’s Vivendi, and Google, which owns YouTube, said the website, to be called VEVO, would be launched later this year.

Universal and YouTube also said they had renewed an agreement that allows users of YouTube to use music by Universal artists in user-generated videos on the popular video-sharing website. Details of the agreement were not disclosed.

The two companies said in a statement that they will share advertising revenue on YouTube and VEVO.com, which they described as a “premium online music video hub built for consumers, advertisers and content owners.”

“This content will be exclusively available through VEVO.com and a new VEVO channel through a special VEVO branded embedded player,” they said.

“VEVO will bring the most compelling premium music video content and services to the world’s single largest online video audience,” said Universal chief executive Doug Morris.

“We believe that at launch, VEVO will already have more traffic than any other music video site in the United States and in the world.”

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said the Internet search giant, which will provide the technology for VEVO.com, is “thrilled to be working with UMG in what will surely be an exciting new service for consumers, advertisers, content creators and the music industry at large.”

Music videos are among the most popular content on YouTube, which Google bought for 1.65 billion dollars in October 2006, and Universal’s channel is already the most-watched on the site with more than 3.5 billion views.

Mountain View, California-based Google has been striving for ways to make money on YouTube while avoiding alienating notoriously transient Web users and assuring film and music studios that video copyrights are being respected.

Warner Music Group pulled its videos from YouTube in December after the companies failed to reached agreement on fees but another major label, Sony Music Entertainment, inked a new deal with YouTube this year.

YouTube began blocking certain copyrighted music videos in Britain and Germany earlier this year while new licensing deals are negotiated.

As album sales decline and online piracy bites into their profits, major record labels have been forging new arrangements such as deals with MySpace, Apple’s iTunes and YouTube to generate new revenue streams.

The number of US Internet users watching videos at YouTube hit a new monthly high in January, topping 100 million as it dominated the online video arena, according to comScore.

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Google launches music downloads in China

by Mahesh Kukreja on March 30, 2009

Google Inc on Monday launched free downloads of licensed songs in China, while sharing advertising revenue with major music labels in a market rife with online piracy.

Lee Kai-Fu, president of Google in greater China, said one reason Google lagged in the mainland search market was because it did not offer music downloads, the missing piece to its strategy in a market where it trails leader Baidu.com Inc.

“We are offering free, high quality and legal downloads,” Lee told reporters. “We were missing one piece … we didn’t have music.”

The service offers downloads of some 350,000 songs — from Chinese and foreign artists — a number that will rise to 1.1 million in the coming months, said Gary Chen, chief executive of Google’s partner www.Top100.cn, a Chinese music website co-founded by basketball star Yao Ming.

Music from artists signed by Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI and Universal Music will be available on the service, which Google has no current plans to expand beyond China, said Lee.

“This is the first serious attempt to start (monetizing) the online market in China. I can’t overestimate how important this is,” said Lachie Rutherford, president of Warner Music Asia Pacific and Asia chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

Users will be able to search by musical measurements such as the level of “beat” in a song and “instrumentality,” as well as by artist and song name.

IFPI said last year that more than 99 percent of all music files distributed in China are pirated, and the country’s total legitimate music market, at $76 million, accounts for less than 1 percent of global recorded music sales.

The new service will attract users away from illegal download sites because the music and service will be of a higher quality, said Warner’s Rutherford.

Downloads of unlicensed music and videos are rampant in China, the world’s biggest Internet market by number of users.

While Google dominates the global web search market, in China Baidu holds more than 60 percent of the market, more than double Google’s share.

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