Google Music: What to expect from today's event
Google is prepping for a big announcement here in Los Angeles today and the rumor mill is buzzing about what the company could possibly be unveiling.
Google is prepping for a big announcement here in Los Angeles today and the rumor mill is buzzing about what the company could possibly be unveiling.
Apple's iPod, which transformed the way music is sold and distributed and revolutionized the consumer electronics industry, turned 10 on Sunday.
There is rampant speculation that Apple will soon join Amazon and Google to offer a service to store your music in the cloud and stream it to your devices.
Apple may have online music streaming deals in place with all four major U.S. music labels in time for the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 6, according to online rumors. The company recently signed a deal with EMI Music and is close to wrapping up deals with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, according to CNET. Previous reports said Apple signed a deal with Warner Music in April.
Google's long-awaited cloud-based music player, Music Beta by Google, will launch today at the company's Google I/O conference, according to Billboard. The service will be free for US users lucky enough to get an invite from Google, with priority given to those with the Verizon version of the Motorola Xoom tablet and to attendees of the I/O conference. Unfortunately, Google didn't come to a license agreement with the major music publishers -- much like Amazon failed to get publishers' blessings with the launch of the Amazon Cloud Drive -- so Music Beta is essentially just a massive remote hard drive.
That little green robot must be struggling to catch his breath.
Amazon's Cloud Player music streaming service launched only with Android compatibility, but an update rolled out this weekend quietly introduced basic support for Apple's iOS. If you have an Amazon Cloud Drive account (5GB free, plus a free 20GB upgrade if you purchase an album via Amazon MP3), you can now stream music on iOS devices too.
Apple's rumored iTunes-in-the-cloud service may be called iCloud, and the iOS maker may have paid as much as $4.5 million to acquire the new name, according to online rumors.
In the virtual game of mobile moneymaking, Amazon has just made a brilliant move.
Amazon's doing its part to usher in cloud computing with Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player. Users get 5 GB of free storage for a general purpose online storage locker and a Web-based music player for desktop computers and Android phones.
A pop quiz: iPhone is to iTunes as Android is to what? If you're coming up blank, there's good reason.
Like many people, I have more music and videos than can possibly fit on my iPhone. What am I supposed to do? Delete all my episodes of "Firefly" to make room for "Flight of the Conchords"? Am I supposed to not listen to Brendan Benson because he can't fit alongside my Green Day library?
If there was any hope left that The Beatles' music would appear on iTunes in this lifetime, Yoko Ono just killed it.