Google to Launch Music Service to Compete Against iTunes?

[MWPULSE]

I dont think that google entering this particular market segment is gonna bring down song prices.. Reason being, the music industry likes money!! huggeeee amounts of it, so the record companies at the mo take a rather large slice of the pie. The production company gets a bit of the pie. The artist gets a bit of the pie. Then finally the retailer or the company who sold you-the consumer/musichead-like myself, the song in the first place wants a bit of the meat as well.

Gradually i can forsee the various companies involved just wanting a bigger pie. i.e more money, how do ya do that?? get more companies involved in selling the music. Its all down to the RIAA and the copyrights etc etc.. but hayy what the heck sounds like it will be fun!

Personally i just hope this means that they increase quality, if only by 100kbps.. At least its closer to CD quality then
PTP

 

[twoodcc]

apple does need to be careful with google, but i think they'll manage

 

[pavvento]

I think all of these competition arguments are missing the point. Neither Google or Apple owns the content they are distributing. Yes they are competing, but unless one of them is willing to take a smaller cut we won't see a huge improvement in pricing.

The key to competition helping us would be if a new music company came around and was able to sign a ton of artists and in order to do that gave the artists a bigger cut, while the company took a smaller cut. Then maybe they could go to Google or Apple and tell them to sell their songs for less money.

If bands started moving to a different company (competition) it would force the Sony's to also start taking smaller cuts.

That competition would be helpful to us, but it's never going to happen.

 

[GoCubsGo]

Amazon is getting some of my purchase business, less on iTunes. Frankly I welcome this. Google is doing amazing things.

 

[Unprocessed1]

apple does need to be careful with google, but i think they'll manage

The scary thing with google is nearly everything they touch or buy turns to gold. Android has the potential to take off, and we know about their dominance of almost every aspect of the internet, from searches to advertisements.

i think there's a personal rivalry and animosity now between Jobs and Schmidt that didn't exist when Schmidt was on Apple's board of directors.

 

[Amdahl]

OK fanbois, why is this negative if it works with my iPhone/iTunes? iTunes isn't and shouldn't be the only music store. We don't even know details on how good or bad the gTunes store would be. Free market tunes please.

Exactly. This should be positive, because as the Apple fanbois tell us, "there's no money in the iTunes Music Store. And Palm should die for syncing with iTunes, which makes no money!!"

Why would Google want to step into a market already dominated? A browser, okay cool. MobileOS.. cool.. that can go to carriers. But this? What's Google's competitive advantage over existing services provided?

Google's advantage would be a shortage of Steve Jobs.

 

[cumanzor]

Ok, I'll take this one, since I'm so sick of the mindless sheep on this forum constantly spewing cliches like "Competition is always good" without actually knowing what they are talking about...

* In the 1980's, competition from the inferior VHS format killed off the much superior Beta format (hurting many early adopters of Beta and consumers in general for having to adopt an inferior "standard".)

* In the 1990's the crappy Windows based computers killed off the superior Commodore Amiga and Atari Falcon computers (and almost killed off Apple who at that time plunged to a 1% market share!)

* Here in the 2000's, the crappy anemic Netbooks have hurt the sales of far better Notebooks in the Windows world (luckily, it hasn't hurt Apple Notebook sales which is why Steve Jobs doesn't want to get into/contribute to the crappy cheap Netbook market.)

And on and on and on. Being a Musician myself, I can very well tell you that competition from cookie-cutter, bubble-gum Major label acts are BAD competition because indie musicians have no hope to compete AT ALL. Look at the ridiculous Grammy Awards and the people who win that year after year... they certainly are not the best or most innovative artists. I guarantee you that for every Grammy winner, I can name 10 innovative indie artists that blow them away, but due to competition (from the Major record labels) the indie artist has nearly no chance of getting the recognition that the Major label artists have.

I can literally list a hundred more examples of how competition has killed off much better products and hurt consumers; from the early years of the car industry up to the 1990's when the first real viable electric car was killed off, to the medical, pharmaceutical and bio-tech industries, to the Television industry and how the crap Reality Shows have caused the cancellation of many good, critically acclaimed shows... and again, on and on and on...

So, sorry you young little kiddies but, competition isn't always good. It's a big misconception that has now turned into a cliche that kids like you blindly spew forth when you have nothing better to contribute.

EDIT: And oh, it was competition that just recently destroyed the American Economy... Anyone that blindly claims that "Competition is ALWAYS good", is an ignorant fool.

I'm sorry. It's not a cliche, it's not what kids believe. I feel extremely sorry for people who will deny fundamental concepts such as this just to defend a corporation (your beloved Apple in this case).

I agree with only thing, there is no such thing as a perfect market. Unfortunately, all those things you mention including the "destruction" of the economy (this wasn't just the American economy kid...) are the product of greed, not of competition. I'm sure you would be perfectly happy if Apple had a monopoly on smartphones, computers, music sales, etc.

Don't even try to deny it, you just said you think competition is evil. But I won't argue with you, since your entire post is just made of opinions (Microsoft is ******, netbooks are ******, Steve Jobs is absolutely right about everything).

edit: As a side note, netbooks are hurting the sales of notebooks? are you sure of this? or is it the fact the overall hardware sales is down due to the economy (remember, correlation does not imply causation). Netbooks are targeted at different markets than notebooks, if you would care to understand this in the first place you would know why they are "crappy" to you.

 

[Malsi]

My cat was starting to look at me suspiciously, so I got her one of these.

That pic is now my iPhone wallpaper!









PS. Thanks for the lols!

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

* In the 1980's, competition from the inferior VHS format killed off the much superior Beta format (hurting many early adopters of Beta and consumers in general for having to adopt an inferior "standard".)

Beta is still alive and well on the professional side. It lost on the consumer side because it was more expensive and Sony refused to come down in price to compete with VHS. The consumers voted with their wallets and VHS won.

* In the 1990's the crappy Windows based computers killed off the superior Commodore Amiga and Atari Falcon computers (and almost killed off Apple who at that time plunged to a 1% market share!)

Again, no one is saying that the market is perfect, but if there was no competition you never would have had the choice between all those things in the first place. You would have just had Windows.

* Here in the 2000's, the crappy anemic Netbooks have hurt the sales of far better Notebooks in the Windows world (luckily, it hasn't hurt Apple Notebook sales which is why Steve Jobs doesn't want to get into/contribute to the crappy cheap Netbook market.)

Again, just because you don't like the winner doesn't mean that competition is flawed. All of these arguments are silly because you are complaining not about competition but about consensus. Without competition in the market there IS NO CHOICE. Just one product.

And on and on and on. Being a Musician myself, I can very well tell you that competition from cookie-cutter, bubble-gum Major label acts are BAD competition...

Again, just because the winner sucks doesn't mean it isn't the most popular option. It almost always is. If there was no competition in the music industry, there would be no indie labels, no indie musicians would ever get their music heard outside of coffee houses and open mic nights.

EDIT: And oh, it was competition that just recently destroyed the American Economy

This is quite possibly the most ignorant thing anyone has ever said. You should run for national office.

 

[VoR]

-Betamax was more expensive and had a shorter runtime (I think?)
-Commodore killed amiga themselves, there's 100s of articles on this.
-Netbooks are netbooks, laptops are laptops. They're just two different form factors, you can get super cheap and super pricey versions of each.
-Your whole post is pretty silly

Anyway, I'd like to think that google would release their music lossless, no idea if they will or not.
What I'd be very surprised if they don't do, is bind your music to an account. So you've got access to all the tracks you've purchased wherever you are, and if you lose/delete/don't have the tracks, it's just a username/password and you've got the download.
Whatever they do, I'll carry on buying (or not...) off whoever sell the best quality the cheapest.

 

[infowarfare]

I'm sorry. It's not a cliche, it's not what kids believe. I feel extremely sorry for people who will deny fundamental concepts such as this just to defend a corporation (your beloved Apple in this case).

I agree with only thing, there is no such thing as a perfect market. Unfortunately, all those things you mention including the "destruction" of the economy (this wasn't just the American economy kid...) are the product of greed, not of competition. I'm sure you would be perfectly happy if Apple had a monopoly on smartphones, computers, music sales, etc.

Don't even try to deny it, you just said you think competition is evil. But I won't argue with you, since your entire post is just made of opinions (Microsoft is ******, netbooks are ******, Steve Jobs is absolutely right about everything).

edit: As a side note, netbooks are hurting the sales of notebooks? are you sure of this? or is it the fact the overall hardware sales is down due to the economy (remember, correlation does not imply causation). Netbooks are targeted at different markets than notebooks, if you would care to understand this in the first place you would know why they are "crappy" to you.

Wow, are you completely dense? Show me exactly where I said competition is evil? All I said (several times in fact) is that I hate people who blindly say competition is ALWAYS good. Read that again. It has nothing to do with my love or hate of Apple; not once did I support Apple in my post at all nor did I bash Google at all... I'm bashing people like you! People that never actually take the time to comprehend a post, that infer your own meaning in other people's posts.

So to clarify, all I said was people who claim competition is ALWAYS good are ignorant. That's it, plain and simple. I never said competition is evil (it can actually be quite good when done in fairness) and in today's world, yes, competition is based on greed for the most part (but not in all cases.) It's usually not about making a better product, it's about making and marketing a cheap piece of junk you can sell quickly in the short term (i.e., Netbooks.)

Since you like putting words in my mouth, I'll do the same to you; don't even try to deny it, you are a communist because you said my opinions don't matter and all opinions should be suppressed! (see how that works?)

As for the Google thing, in this case, I think this would be a good thing; more options to search for music (which is all this is actually about.)

This is why i so hate this forum these day, nobody actually reads or comprehends what others are actually saying...

 

[FearNo1]

What is so "scary" about that? What is so scary about more competition? Some of you talk like you work for apple...

The scary thing with google is nearly everything they touch or buy turns to gold. Android has the potential to take off, and we know about their dominance of almost every aspect of the internet, from searches to advertisements.

i think there's a personal rivalry and animosity now between Jobs and Schmidt that didn't exist when Schmidt was on Apple's board of directors.

 

[brendon2020]

love this, hopefully this will force prices down.