Google Music Will Soon Battle Apple's iTunes

By Mike Schuster Jun 15, 2010 1:50 pm

Amazon, Zune have failed to take business away from Apple. Can Google succeed?

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With an overwhelming 70% market share in digital music sales -- and leading with 28% of all music sales -- Apple's (AAPL) iTunes Store seems like an unstoppable force. Ahead of Amazon (AMZN), Walmart (WMT), and Best Buy (BBY) in sales, Apple continues to steer customers away from brick-and-mortar stores and online retailers to become the fastest and easiest way of loading media onto one's iPod. In fact, it's earned a federal investigation because of it. (See Apple Faces Another Federal Investigation.)

But as Amazon promotions and Zune's (MSFT) online streaming features fail to draw a significant portion of Apple's business away, Google (GOOG) is hoping to be the exception.

At last month's developers conference, the search giant showed off its many projects in the pipeline and among them was a brief sneak peek at a Web-based Google music store. Not much was revealed, but the Google team did announce that the marketplace will run from a Web browser or an Android device, allowing for wireless downloads and streaming. And earlier this month, TechCrunch discovered a logo hosted on Google's servers. The name as yet unconfirmed: Google Music.

If the prospect of streaming your iTunes library over Wi-Fi to your Android device sounds like a feature too good to wait for, the wait may not be much longer. According to anonymous industry sources, the service could arrive as soon as this fall, CNET's Greg Sandoval reported.

Sources also claim that executives from the four major labels -- Sony (SNE), EMI, Warner Music (WMG), and Universal -- have met with Google to discuss partnerships.

While this will be Google's largest undertaking in the music world, it wouldn't be its first. The company has already experimented with links to song titles incorporated into search results. The listed tracks linked to sources like Rhapsody, Pandora, MySpace's (NWS) iLike, and Lala -- but the latter unsurprisingly disappeared after Apple's acquisition.

Speaking of Rhapsody, sources indicate that an ex-employee from the former RealNetworks (RNWK) music service is now working on Google Music's development.

Google's recently acquired Simplify Media plays the key component in battling the iTunes juggernaut. Simplify Media's technology will cover the cloud-based library streaming, as addressed by Google engineering executive Vic Gundotra during last month's conference. The feature is intended to play a huge role in Android's Froyo update and will hopefully upgrade the operating system's woefully underpowered default music software.

Google Music's streaming capability certainly has a chance to make a dent in the iTunes Store business, but will the company have it launched in time for exclusivity? At the end of April, plans were rumored to be underway for an online version of iTunes when Lala's service was shut down. (See Does Apple Have Big Plans for iTunes?) Analysts say Apple's move to the cloud would be inevitable and increased competition from Google and Android smartphones would certainly hasten the transition.

No matter who puts media libraries online first and most effectively, the Apple-Google one-upmanship is putting some incredible features at consumers' fingertips.

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