Posted in Menacing Monopoly, War on Privacy

Google reportedly working on launching music streaming offering

Google is reportedly developing an offering to compete with the likes of Spotify and Rhapsody, because its cyber empire simply isn’t big enough:

Dear Spotify, Rhapsody and any other music-streaming service out there: Here comes Google.

The Wall Street Journal and now Bloomberg are reporting that Google is planning to launch a worldwide music streaming service in Q3 of this year. Google is reportedly talking to music companies about licenses for the service, which mimics that of Spotify.

Record labels currently have a strained relationship with Google because they believe Google acts as a gateway for sites where people can connect to swap tunes without paying royalties to the labels. It will be interesting to see if Google can come to terms with the industry’s few remaining major players. At this point, except for the independent labels, the music industry is a triopoly – it’s just Universal, Warner, and Sony. (EMI was subsumed by Universal and Sony).

Executives at Google seemingly feel the need to compete in every product category with every other major technology company, and they have tried to grow the Google empire through acquisitions in addition to product launches. In recent years, Google has attempted to buy many of the emerging players in Silicon Valley, including Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, and the now-struggling Groupon. All of those companies walked away from Google’s offers and overtures, forcing the Monster of Mountain View to launch its own offerings (including Google+, Google Offers, and Google Places).

A music streaming offering is just another way for Google to increase its treasure trove of user data. Google wants people to keep people on its properties, and its executives think it can best do that by having an offering for everything.