With its new service,
announced at its annual developers conference in San Francisco, Google has
adopted the streaming music business model ahead of rival Apple Inc, which
pioneered online music purchases with iTunes.
Googles All Access
service lets users customize song selections from 22 genres, ranging from Jazz
to Indie music, stream individual playlists, or listen to a curated, radio-like
stream that can be tweaked. It will be launched for U.S. users first, before
being rolled out to several other countries
Google unveiled a
string of improvements to other services, including new mapping features and a
voice-activated search, at the conference. The focus was on giving more options
to users of mobile devices using its Android software, the operating system
that now runs three out of every four smartphones sold.
Shares of Google, the
worlds largest Internet search company, jumped more than 3 percent while
Pandora Media Inc shares were down more than 1 percent on Wednesday afternoon.
Googles new music service
amps up the competition in the nascent market for subscription-based, streaming
music. Amazon.com Inc and Apple are among the Silicon Valley powerhouses
sounding out top recording industry executives, according to sources with
knowledge of talks.
Pandora is spending
freely and racking up losses to expand globally. Even social media stalwarts
Facebook and Twitter are jumping onto the streaming-music bandwagon. All these companies
see a viable music streaming and subscription service as crucial to growing
their presence in an exploding mobile environment. For Google and Apple, it is
critical in ensuring users remain loyal to their mobile products.
With a music service, Google further locks consumers into its sphere of products and services, said Chris Silva, an analyst with Altimeter Group. They are trying to sell an ecosystem, he said. The more things I am doing, the more things that tie me to Google services
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