Google Music Update: Don’t Get Too Excited
As information from a variety of media and private sources coalesces into something closer to facts, it's become apparent that Google's new music service, while a nice upgrade to music search, is not the big news that the media – as it does with most things Google – is making it out to be.
The new features, which will be formally announced next Wednesday, simply adds single song streaming and a buy function to music searches on Google. The single song streaming and purchase function is powered by both MySpace owned iLike and LaLa; though other services like iTunes and Amazon are rumored to be on deck for later inclusionl.
What Google Music Is NOT
Google's new music service is NOT a full download sales site like Amazon or iTunes. It is also NOT a streaming service like Spotify, Pandora or Rhapsody. Think of this announcement as just another a new feature, and just like Google's current music search features that, for example, sometimes adds a photo to searches, it will take time before it trickles down to include many indie and d.i.y. artists.
Maybe I’m thinking more “pie in the sky” than I should – but – Google has proven to be really good leveraging data to create useful services. If they tune into how people are interacting with individual songs online, couldn’t they become a Nielsen type data source? For free maybe?
I like that idea if that’s where they’re headed. Especially since indie artists don’t typically have the budget to see that level of data.
If you’re selling your music online, you should have access to your sales data. If you don’t, you need to get a better retailer.
Isn’t something like this already rolled out on Google China?
Definitely a step in the right direction, but does it concern anyone that Google is partnering w/ companies for these results? What I’m foreseeing are these companies charging big bucks for indie artists to show up in the results once it really gets going.