GOOG to create online music store to challenge Apple,Amazon

London, Oct 14: Internet search engine and advertising leader, Google Inc. is planning to create an online music store to compete with Apple Inc. and Amazon Inc. The company is likely to launch the service without right to sell from many of the biggest music companies.

According to a source, all four of the major music companies namely Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, Sony Corporation's Sony Music, Access Industries Inc.'s Warner Music Group and Citigroup Inc.'s EMI Group participated in a talk to license their catalogs to Google for the new online music store. But only the smallest EMI Group was able to reach close to a deal. Others are still continuing their talks with Google. The talks come amid increasing competitions in the online-music business.

Google is trying to compete with its rivals Amazon and Apple by creating services that combine retail sales and remote music storage known as "cloud" or "locker" services.

However, Apple has already gone beyond Google in this race by launching iCloud last week, which promises to provide more comprehensive combination of features than in either Amazon or Google.

Google's Music Beta and Amazon's Cloud Player allow users to store music online but since neither services do not have licenses from all the music companies, users must upload most of the music they want to store in the system.

Meanwhile, Google is working to partner with agreeable record labels to offer more songs. The Google Music Beta, which was launched in May, 2011, lets people upload up to 20,000 songs, including from their iTunes libraries.

OneIndia News