Google Launches Music Service to Rival Apple iTunes

Google Inc. announced the launch of its Android centered Google Music Store on Wednesday, which will take on Apple’s iTunes.

Google inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is now focused on mobile communications and social networking, which have turned into the biggest targets at present after the launch of Google Music Store which rivals Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iTunes store. Google’s online music store was expected to have a fully functional, more advanced cloud based service, which has left Google’s new music partners disappointed who have also gone ahead and called the online music store to be unexciting.

Google, which had huge plans for the online music store was forced to cut back on its plans and settle for less after the licensing talks broke down earlier this year. The current Google’s music service will be similar to Apple’s iTunes Music Store, which is currently the biggest music retailer in the world allowing the users to download music. Google is coming up with products in order to close the gap between its competitors like Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Facebook, who all have various degrees of music integration as a part of their core mobile and online products.

According to people close to the talks and negotiations with music recording companies, Google thinks that there is plenty of stuff still out there to play for. Supporting the stand, music is one more thing for which people buy Android based mobile devices according to analysts.

Google has currently negotiated deals with three out of four major record labels namely  Vivendi SA (EPA:VIV), Sony Corp.(NYSE:SNE)’s Sony Music Entertainment and EMI in addition to various independent label groups like Merlin and Beggar’s Banquet label group. Google and Warner Group, one among the big four of music industry is still in the initial stages of talks. The benchmark set by Apple and Amazon is hard to meet by Google and it is essential that Google, instead of providing similar kind of “me-too” services should raise the bar and offer some differentiated version for the customers in order to gain ground in this particular segment and offer a stiff competition to its rivals.

On the other hand, Google’s Android music store is partnered with its cloud services which will automatically store downloaded songs in Google Music and those songs will not be counted in the 20,000 songs limit. It will also allow the users to share the songs with their friends on Google+. Apple’s similar iCloud has a limit of 5 GB free space and charges for extra space.

Post Written By: Ed Liston Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.