So the race to the cloud is really on now with Google entering the pack officially yesterday. I must say I’m impressed with their play to solidify the android tablet and mobile OS with this new service. They came right out of the gate with 20 times more free space than the Amazon Cloud player, which will give users about 20,000 songs vs. 4,000 song capacity. They have a nice offline feature for listeners on the go at 30,000 feet above the ground.

Falling in suit with Amazon, Google has declared the Record Labels and their copyright licenses irrelevant. Both players are running without any Label cooperation, and giving the power to the people to do what they want with their music (what a novel idea!).

It all boils down to accessibility of your music and the portability of it. While these cloud services patch the inherent problem of tablets and mobile devices that can’t store all of our massive music files (both paid for and stolen of course . It’s a step in the right direction, but I believe the broader step is going to be endless accessibility of all music through subscription. There hasn’t been a real player step up in the music subscription world like Netflix has in the movie industry. This will change soon, then we (the Record Labels) will have to monetize access vs. ownership. Get ready for another disruptive business model fellow labels.

Okay, back to the cloud services. There is one fatal mistake I believe in Google’s new entry to the cloud race and it’s the flash device incompatibility. That’s right, you can import your iTunes library but don’t expect to access it on an iPad, iPod, or iPhone device. Hmmmm, like I said it’s an aggressive play to solidify the competitive Android OS market position. Although, I believe Google is underestimating the music library and device market share Apple has on them. I also believe they are overestimating the market share they’ll gain between now and June when Apple flips the cloud switch on. When that happens, game over. The masses will continue to live in a world with a one bite apple logo.

Breathe In & Smile Out,
Chris