Google Music is set to launch Music Beta today, which allows users to upload their music library to a personal online storage. The Music Beta users will be able to stream and download files from Internet connected devices.
Music Beta will only be limited to users in the U.S. and one will have to be invited to become a user.
In order to receive a request, the potential user must make the request on google.music.com. Priorities will be given to those who use Motorola Xoom tablet and those who attend today’s conference. With Music Beta, users can upload up to 20,000 songs to the music locker for users.
Google will also be introducing a new music player app. for Android users. It can be used to play any music stored on Android devices, but can’t access music from Amazon’s Cloud Drive, unless users are part of Music Beta.
Zahavah Levine is Google’s director of content and lead the company’s negotiations with major labels. Google decided to launch without the negotiations completed with the major labels.
“We’ve been in negotiations with the industry for a different set of features, with mixed results,” Levine told Billboard. “[But] a couple of major labels were less focused on innovation and more on demanding unreasonable and unsustainable business terms.”
Billboard reported that Google originally wanted to offer a scan-and-match style locker service — where instead of uploading different copies of the same track to store in a locker for each users. The service would scan users’ libraries and match the songs they own to a centralized server, paying rightsholders for each stream.
One feature offered is an instant mix feature that creates a playlist based on a single song. A song’s characteristics will be used to created the playlist and other similar songs from the users’ music library will be used. Playlist can also be created from cell phones.
