Looking to extend its reach as a hub for entertainment and social networking, Google on Wednesday introduced a set of music features, including a download store to compete with iTunes.
The service, Google Music, will sell individual tracks and full albums, letting customers store the songs on servers, on so-called cloud accounts. And through an integration with Google's nascent social network, Google(PLUS), the company will also let customers share music by offering friends one free listen to any bought track.
Google Music puts the company in competition with Apple, Amazon and Facebook. Many analysts saw the move as part of an escalating war among those companies to develop consumer environments.
"They've got to make their ecosystem appeal to consumers in a way that Amazon and Apple have," said Michael Gartenberg, a media analyst with Gartner. "Personal cloud services are what's going to drive the next wave of consumer adoption. So Google has to be playing here. But because they're so late they have to be playing here in a unique way."
Google will sell music through the Android Market, where users of its mobile phone system buy apps, videos and e-books. The service is an expansion of Music Beta, which the company introduced in May, and will store customers' songs in remote servers and allow users to listen to them on any device or computer.
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The service, Google Music, will sell individual tracks and full albums, letting customers store the songs on servers, on so-called cloud accounts. And through an integration with Google's nascent social network, Google(PLUS), the company will also let customers share music by offering friends one free listen to any bought track.
Google Music puts the company in competition with Apple, Amazon and Facebook. Many analysts saw the move as part of an escalating war among those companies to develop consumer environments.
"They've got to make their ecosystem appeal to consumers in a way that Amazon and Apple have," said Michael Gartenberg, a media analyst with Gartner. "Personal cloud services are what's going to drive the next wave of consumer adoption. So Google has to be playing here. But because they're so late they have to be playing here in a unique way."
Google will sell music through the Android Market, where users of its mobile phone system buy apps, videos and e-books. The service is an expansion of Music Beta, which the company introduced in May, and will store customers' songs in remote servers and allow users to listen to them on any device or computer.
read more>>
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