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Does Google Music have a chance?
Yesterday Google launched Google Music - an online music store that will compete with both Apple & Amazon's online music offerings. Is Google a little late to the game with this one? Gartner's Mike McGuire was quoted in Reuters as saying, "It's a launch, but it's kind of like a work-in-progress." What do you think? Does Google Music have a chance against the other industry giants?
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3 Answers
I'd add Facebook with Spotify integration into this list.
I see two main issues for Google to overcome here:
1. Music is inherently social.
If Google is relying on people searching to find music and that's where they hope to get user activity, it won't last long. Music is so inherently social, as we are seeing with the success of multiple music services, especially Spotify, on Facebook's platform. More and more of the buying cycle for music will begin with a social recommendation. It's possible they have plans for G+ integration at some point but it's hard to see the user adoption path there.
2. Music needs to be portable
Spotify and Apple nail this with their mobile offerings and that's a big part for their respective successes. Amazon established their storefront early on, have everything in the cloud, and have the benefit of many users being habituated to buying from them already.
Maybe Google has an Android platform angle here that I am not seeing?
Devoid of some master Google+ integration plan here, I expect them to mature this product a little further and see what happens. But, what do I know? The guys and gals in Mountain View are pretty smart and Larry's been doing a bang up job strategically aligning their various product endeavors.
I'm a big fan of Google Music - it's a great way to sync your music collection to your phone if you're an Android user - and to organize and 'locker' it online. It's a fairly simple and straightforward service but that's exactly what I like about it!
Caty Kobe,this is a good and step in the right path by Google and most important thing is that they need to get Warner Brothers on board and crucially move it beyond the confines of the USA as next the next frontier and that should be done soon not later.With such kind of plan,there is no doubt they will manage.I will share some of my thought on Google music.
First,I have to admit that the Artist Hub feature could turn out to be very interesting and differentiating. For example,it allows artists without a recording contract to post and sell their music direct to consumers bypassing the record labels like universal and EMI to mention but a few. To make it even tastier, the 70/30 revenue split, artists could make some real money and render the labels even less powerful which in my opinion could herald a new era in music industry.
Another interesting thing that Google music offers, is that someone can play music from other stores on your other phone provided it is in the mp3 format, which most of them are these days as compared to playing iTunes music on other players which has never been easy.Since Larry returned to the helm,Google seems to have woken up and I can testify that because the Android is in ascendance same as Google +, unrivaled dominance of search and GMail and now Google music,I bet things can only get better for the company.Google now looks stronger and better and far more focused to take on Facebook, Apple and Amazon that was the case last year.I think the next 18 months should be fascinating and good for us all.
One can only bet against G-Music because with 20 major studios and independents and 13 million songs, Google is off to a roaring start. In the past 6 months, Google has activated more than 200 million Android smartphones compared to the 100 million activated 6 months earlier.There is no doubt Android is outselling iPhones by a factor of 3 to 1 which is no mean achievement. And putting Google Music onto Android Phones and make it globally available soon,then it provide artists with access to 200 million + Android users and over 40 million Google + sharers is a huge boost for artists and should prove highly popular worldwide.This is something iTunes has terribly failed.
Many are now shunning PCs and are using smartphones as they entry level device and research shows that they are going for android phones and should they embrace Google Music and support the artists and studios through their Android smartphone then iTunes will be confined to annals of history.I frankly believe that there will be massive support for Google Music, its free storage, its artist support and by the law of large numbers.To be precise with answer for your question Caty Kobe,Google is not time barred.
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