Several sources are reporting that Google will be launching a music service as early as next week. Rumored to be called, depending on who you talk to, Google Music, Google Audio or Google OneBox, the service will center on streaming rather than download sales.
Wired and TechCrunch seem to have the best sources so far with Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired's Epicenter blog reporting that Google "will not become a music retailer, but will offer enhanced music search with a streaming function - first of possibly several vertical search offerings. Searching for an artist or song will apparently bring up a box (thus Google’s working title: “OneBox”) with a streaming link randomly assigned to stream from either Lala or iLike."
Buskirk suggests that the labels are in the process of gathering assets including video for Google, but it's not clear to me why that would be necessary if iLike or Lala are the audio provider and certainly Google's YouTube already has every video imaginable on its servers. Stay tuned as details come in...
