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Digital
More on Google download and streaming plans
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 23 June 2010
The Wall Street Journal has revealed more rumours about Google’s plans to step up its music operations. As previously reported, C-Net last week reported that the web company was planning on launching their own music service within the year.
At the moment Google in the US has OneBox, where users who look for artists via the search engine can preview tracks directly via the Google platform, with the preview stream in reality coming from MySpace’s iLike streaming music service. The new plan, it seems, is to expand on OneBox, so to offer downloads and a Spotify-style streaming service.
According to the Journal, stage one of Google’s new music plans would see the web firm add a download option to the above mentioned enhanced music search service, so that when users search for a song, they will be able to stream it there and then via iLike, or buy it as an MP3 through the Google interface. Whether Google would actually handle the download itself, or piggy-back on another download platform, isn’t known.
Stage two would see Google provide a full-on streaming service, presumably more in Spotify or We7 territory. The specifics of how that service will work, and whether it will be ad-funded or subscription based, is also not clear, though it seems Google’s streaming music ambitions are more linked to their mobile phone Android operating system, so any service would be fully mobile-compliant from launch.
Google are yet to comment.
