Google Music looks like it won’t arrive before Christmas and probably not until 2011. The issue? Well, it’s our good friends the music industry throwing their collection of diamond-encrusted spanners in the works. Google Music is planned as both a store and digital locker service and it’s apparently the second part bothering record labels. The record industry is worried that listeners will store and stream illegally downloaded music in their Google Music locker. Yes, they probably will. So what?
A senior record industry exec pulled his head out of the sand long enough to tell the New York Post what’s keeping Google Music in the works: “What’s been holding things up is that labels will do downloads but they need to know more about the locker service and Google really wants to keep the two together…there are questions about the advertising model for a locker-based service.”
So as usual it all comes down to cash and the same issues that have stymied the Spotify US launch too. The rumours are that Google negotiations with the music industry have been going on for months but they won’t be sorted in time for a pre-Christmas launch. Bummer.
On the plus side, the influential CEO of Warner Music, Edgar Bronfman Jr, told analysts on a conference call that he had high hopes that Google Music and other services will “come online in calendar 2011”. In human speak that means the record industry might budge in time for some interesting announcements in early 2011. Phew! Hopefully that’ll mean those Spotify losses get sorted too.
Out TBC | £TBC | Google (via New York Post)
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