Google has demoed a couple of new multimedia services, including a streaming and storage service for music, and an app for renting and streaming movies. Neither of them are coming to the UK any time soon, but here's the skinny.
Music
Let's start with Google Music. Essentially it's a digital locker for your tunes. Google will graciously play host to your music collection so you can stream the lot of it at your convenience, to just about any device, and we'd recommend you click through the photos above to see how it'll look. It's launching in beta in the US only today, and allows users to upload 20,000 songs, which will certainly cover most peoples' entire music collection.
Not only is your whole stack of choons then backed up online by the Big G, it means you can access all of your music from any device, just by signing in with your Google account. That would be incredibly useful, and means you needn't faff around with syncing and cables to get your music on to a new device.
The company showed off the desktop version of Google Music, as well as tablet and mobile versions. The tablet iteration for Honeycomb devices looked particularly impressive, with swoopy menus aplenty, while the mobile version is a tad more basic, but certainly seemed very slick.
The service will be able to automatically generate playlists for you, picking 25 tunes from your collection it thinks you'll enjoy, based on a single song, much like iTunes' Genius feature. Google is the master of crafty AI, so here's hoping that feature works as advertised, and that it can learn what we enjoy based on our listening history.
It can also cache music to your device, so if you lose connection the tracks you've already heard should remain available to listen to. You can also choose to download music to your device to listen to when you don't have an Internet connection, or when you want to save on data charges.
Google Music is free while it's in beta, and it's launching today as an invite-only service, but sadly only in the US. It could be some time before we see it rolled out to UK shores, if ever. It's likely there'll be a small amount of music storage for free, with more gigabytes commanding a premium.
Google also showed off a hi-fi system that could stream tunes directly from the cloud, part of an initiative it calls Project Tungsten.
Movies
Google is also going to Hollywood -- launching a movie service that lets you rent and stream films. You can store the movie locally on your device if you want to. We saw one film in Google's demo that cost $1.99 (£1.20), but there's no telling how much other movies will cost. Oscar monarch The King's Speech was a very reasonable $3.99 (£2.40).
A movie app for Android tablets will come as part of the all-new Honeycomb 3.1 update, and there's a movie app coming for mobiles in the next two weeks.
Details on this service are a little scarce at the moment, but we'll surely know more soon. What we do know is that it's currently only destined for the US, which makes us cry.
Still, this puts Google in direct competition with services such as Netflix, which will make for an interesting digital punch-up.
Google is once more wading into other companies' territory. Is this curtains for Spotify? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook wall.
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Comments 17
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anonymous 10 May, 2011 18:52
UK misses out.... well at least its the first time thats happened
anonymous 10 May, 2011 19:23
It seems the first day of IO and Google have completely ignored all of its international customers. Not it exactly nice of them is it.
anonymous 10 May, 2011 19:26
An a film cost 2.49 that you can only watch once is not reasonable. Even 1.20 is expensive. Especially when compare with the prices of DVDs nowadays, most new releases between a fiver and ten pounds. An if they old films I seen offers for 3 for ten pounds.
Those prices are a complete con.
Anonymous 10 May, 2011 20:29
Why is the UK unlikely to get this?
Anonymous 10 May, 2011 21:16
between Apple, Amazon and Google they do like to ignore the UK. to be honest, I'm getting fed up with their attitude towards the UK. Hopefully another company comes in and steals their thunder, because the first company to hit the market in the UK with a multi or semi multi device app could end up cornering the market. HP the door has been left open for you, but you better be quick
Bearne 10 May, 2011 22:41
Evening though we are missing out, the Music service is great especially because since you can upload your own music and don't have to buy it from them (like iTunes).
And this isn't the only Google service to beta tested only in america.
anonymous 10 May, 2011 23:03
The reason why they're not launching here is because its illegal... same law that makes copying songs to your mp3 player illegal but the recording companies turn a blind eye to that since they'd get nowhere with it.
anonymous 10 May, 2011 23:06
If we get the government to update the law to work in this century then we might be able to get these services.
Naryan 11 May, 2011 05:21
*This* isn't "curtains for Spotify", the move they were forced into just recently by WMG and friends is when *that* service died. And wow, the UK misses out... I don't think that's ever happened before... oh no wait.
Anonymous 11 May, 2011 10:05
You can put music from any source you like into Amazon's cloud, ... Amazon might have 'stolen a march' on Apple/Google but it will be .... You can access this service from the UK at amazon.com using your amazon.co.uk credentials. ... Who are these people that find moving files on or off an MP3.
___________
Nancy.
anonymous 11 May, 2011 11:12
its not like we miss out, its only in beta and atm its pretty useless without any music label licences
Anonymous 11 May, 2011 12:34
since it is entertainment on the go so not much of an issue over the amount they are charging but then why no UK service?!!
anonymous 11 May, 2011 15:04
So Google I/O for anyone outside of the US was a disappointment, I was really looking forward to it too. For the first time ever I'm looking at my Android phone in disappointment. I know its prob just not available till its out of Beta but we could be waiting for about 5 years for that to happen as Google puts products in Beta for an eternity. So Google thanks for the middle finger much appreciated, I love Android but I have to say I'm bitterly disappointed.
Anonymous 13 May, 2011 15:40
Google and other companies arent ignoring the UK market, the reasons behind why they havent released the service here is down to out of date copyright laws which make services such as "Music" by Google illegal. The only way the UK market will get "Music" is if the copyright law is changed, or if google acquires deals with the major music labels like orginally planned, however due to the fact this industry is extremely greedy I do not see any deals been made in the near future.
So if you feel like blaming someone blame the UK legal system which is extremely old fashioned and out of date resulting in problems like we are seeing here. Hope this helped clear up some of your questions. Many thanks!
anonymous 1 July, 2011 00:40
I hope this is the beginning of the end for iTunes. That dog-awful piece-of-crap application which makes a tortured alsation seem friendly. However, I do fear this is again creating more distance away from the traditional hard copy method.
Regardless, if it makes Apple looks stupid to more people, then I'm happy.
Anonymous 3 August, 2011 19:18
This wont be the end of iTunes.
Google can NEVER overtake Apple. I am not an Apple Fanboy, but, iTunes is basically Apples "Golden Source"
Whatever you do, goes through iTunes. Streaming music to iPods, iPads, iPhones, etc.
What is likely to happen, is Google will be sued for millions by Artists and Apple itself, if it decides to in fragment Apples patents. Such as, Coverflow and Genius etc.
However, I also, hate iTunes. It is slow and clunky, and needs to look more "macintosh-ish"
anonymous 19 December, 2011 14:28
mspot does most of this already and it's free (for 1gb)