Hey! You! Get On To My Cloud!

Microsoft, Apple, and Google. It's becoming harder and harder to find an area where they are not on top of each other's every move. While each one has its respective strength, i.e. Microsoft's desktop and business platform, Apple's consumer/entertainment aesthetics, and Google's information management, we haven't seen much in the way of viable direct competition in each other's core businesses, Bing included. Ok, Android is showing some legs. While speculation has run rampant about the world of opportunity at Google's virtual fingertips, Google's foray into music could have truly revolutionary implications in the music industry and beyond.

Apple launched iTunes and the iPod in 2001. In time of music industry turmoil, the iTunes platform grew into a socially and economical stable platform. When the maintsream medium for music went from physical CDs to digital storage devices, it's safe to say Apple was leading the charge. In the last decade, not only has an increasingly large percentage of consumers begun to purchase their music online, a generation of consumers decided to transfer their CDs digital audio files. As this generation (and beyond) have come to access their music via digital audio players, they have been given a choice... Play music they own through an access point on a device where their music is already stored, or pay for a license to stream music they don't own online. Therein lies a limit. What Google has sought for business productivity software, they now seek to do for consumer audio - put it in the cloud. In doing so, it is going directly after Apple.

As shown in the article linked below, Google is seeking to store consumer's music online and provide anytime, anywhere access for a nominal fee. If successful, Google can detach music from proprietary locked devices, capture a world of valuable consumption patterns and connections, all the while collecting a nominal fee. Although they face hurdles in industry sales/licensing, user interface and design, and ever-splintering device support, Google almost certainly makes up for them in the department of engaged consumers and customer insight. Call it rampant speculation if you insist, but Google is betting that they not only have the power to redefine the industry once again, but that they also have the will and a way.

http://fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1953078