Google has set its sights on combating Apple’s iTunes by partnering with online retail giant, Amazon, to announce the launch of a new online music store. Users will have the ability to download MP3s via mobile devices such as the recently launched T-Mobile G1 powered by Google’s Android Mobile OS.
Users will now have the ability to search, preview and purchase music from Amazon’s MP3 store, in similar iTunes fashion, via the device’s WiFi connection. While iTunes remains a dominating force in this market, it would seem nearly impossible launch a brand new music store in this sector. Yet Amazon’s 100% DRM-free stance, may begin to pose a forthcoming threat, which had led Google to decide that it would be far easier to integrate with Amazon rather than single-handedly take on such an endeavor.
“Amazon wants to make it easy for customers to discover, buy, and play their music wherever they happen to be — whether sitting at their computer or on the go,” stated Amazon digital music and video president Bill Carr. “We look forward to the release of the T-Mobile G1, which will put Amazon MP3’s vast selection of low-priced DRM-free music at the fingertips of even more customers in more places.”
While the mobile iTunes Store remains offline until connected to WiFi, users of this new music store will have the ability to queue purchases from even an EDGE network that can later be download via WiFi. This presents an interesting advantage over using iTunes on the go. Additionally, Apple does not allow developers to access the iPod application on the iPhone, leaving them relatively locked out of developing new and intuitive music applications. If Google does allow developers access to design applications that integrate with the new music store and player, Android powered devices may soon present music related advantages over the iPhone.
“For example, picture a mash-up of Shazam, GPS, timestamp and the camera that identifies songs you’ve identified and matches them with pictures taken in a similar time or place with the ability to buy any 30-second samples of unpurchased songs that are in the slideshow and other ideas along those lines.”
While the G1 is no where near mature enough to begin to out perform the iPhone, the Android platform seems to be taking necessary steps in the right direction.
[via Wired]
4 Comments to “Google Teams Up With Amazon for New Mobile Music Store”
Um, “advantage”?
I guess it is an advantage to be able to bookmark a song for downloading anytime, instead of having to just store the name and then search for the song later. But that’s not exactly a huge advantage.
And remember, this limitation is only because the carrier doesn’t want to close the $2 and up/song store they operate for their other cell phones, which do permit directly downloading to handsets [so it's not all about the bandwidth...].
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While I see what your saying here, there is no doubt that I have found myself in situations where it would be handy to queue up a song that I had heard while outside of a WiFi connected area. Given that I have a short term memory, I would otherwise forget about that song that I had heard. Either way its still pretty minuscule, yet a feature I would gladly accept on my iPhone.
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There’s still no desktop application for managing any of the content you will buy/download or have on the device. While the gadget will be fun to play with for most of us, it won’t be replacing my iPhone.
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That’s exactly right. Without a desktop application, I wouldn’t even bother. Although it will be interesting to see what applications developers will come up with if given access to integrate with the music store/player. We’ll just have to see.
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