0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Google has been forced to scale back its plans for a cloud-based music service. The company blamed lack of co-operation from the major record labels.Its product, currently named Music Beta, will now launch in a scaled-down form. Users in the US will be able to upload tracks from their personal collection to Google's servers and play them on Android smartphones and tablet devices.The free service will feature enough space to store 20,000 songs.Google announced its failure to strike the necessary deals at the company's annual developer conference in San Francisco.The web firm said that business and product demands from some labels were too onerous. But it stressed that Music Beta was a totally legal service, and that the door had not been closed to future deals."We are open to discussion, as long as those discussions are aimed at creating a product and service for end-users that is on a sustainable set of business terms which represents a good value for users," Jamie Rosenberg, director of digital content for Android, told BBC News."It is in our interest and in our plans to work with the music industry and sell their artists."What we are focused on now is that users have existing music collections they have spent time and money acquiring, and giving them access to that music wherever they want it."Analysts have said there is little doubt that Google has been forced to scale back its ambitions. "This is not the service they wanted to do, but it is the service they could do without running into all sorts of interference from the record labels," said Michael Gartenberg, senior analyst with research firm Gartner.
