Google enters music locker race without major label support

The Internet search giant introduced the digital music locker service at its annual I/O developer conference in San Francisco. So far, only U.S. users can access the service by requesting an invitation from Google, during priorities will be given to those with the Verizon version of the Motorola Xoom tablet and attendees of the I/O conference.

License agreement with major music labels

Since Google failed to come to a license agreement with major music labels, Music Beta is in essence a massive cloud hard drive. Users cannot share their music or purchase new songs. It allows users to upload 20,000 songs into "the cloud," a term that refers to the provision of computing resources via network.

Any web-connected devices with a browser or supporting Flash can stream music from the digital locker, nevertheless the service is only for Android-powered devices.

Music Beta as well gets Instant Mix, an intelligent feature similar to Apple's Genius playlist creator, which creates new playlists based on a single song by analyzing its characteristics. The playlists created can as well be synced across devices.

The industry for a different set of features

"We've been in negotiations with the industry for a different set of features, with mixed results," Google director of content partnerships Zahavah Levine told the Billboard magazine. "(However) a couple of major labels were less focused on technology and more on demanding unreasonable and unsustainable business terms."

Google's Music Beta is only supported by Android-powered devices, during Amazon's Cloud Player can work on browsers including Windows Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. As well on Tuesday, Amazon released an update, making its music service accessible by Apple's iOS devices like iPad and iPhone.

The difference is Apple

Another competitor which could make all the difference is Apple. The company, which was just crowned with the most valuable global brand by WPP on Monday, reportedly will announce its entrance into the music locker race, with full cooperation from the major music labels.

With a music license, Apple only needs to store one copy of a song on its servers and make it shared with multiple users, which is way more manageable than heavy uploads, analysts said.