Google Music — what’s the big deal?

With all the attention Google has gotten for its new music search, you would think the company was going to compete with iTunes.com, or Napster.com — or that Larry and Sergey had set up their own music label. It isn’t the Google Music Store that some have been talking about, and you can’t even click on a link and listen to a streaming web clip of a song. So Google searches for things and then links to them — what’s the big deal about that?

Maybe at some point Google will be able to index audio files and link to them — although that would no doubt become a legal quagmire. Mike over at TechDirt is already speculating about the existing music search getting the company in trouble because it links to lyrics, and ~~the RIAA~~ a music publisher just finished shutting down PearLyrics.com (although there is some reason for hope there, apparently — more details here). In any case, Google Music seems a little thin to be getting so excited about.

Apparently I’m in good company. Fred Wilson of A VC doesn’t think much of it either (Fred, I tried to link to your post directly but the link didn’t work).

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Tagged as: Google, iTunes, Music, Napster, search, store

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Michael 2 years ago 1 point
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Just a point of clarification: It wasn't the RIAA that shut down pearLyrics, it was Warner/Chappell Music, a music publisher. W/C is part of Warner Music, which is a record label, but it isn't a label itself. It may seem like a trivial distinction, but I think the RIAA's actions have been objectionable enough without attributing actions to it that it didn't do. And it's important to keep track of all the players in this sorry saga.

But on your main point, I agree. What's the big deal? Yahoo! has already been doing this, and Google's implementation is pretty bare-bones. I wasn't even sure what the Google blog was talking about when I first tried a music search. Seems like anything Google does, however trivial, gets gigabytes worth of coverage these days.

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Mathew 2 years ago 1 point
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That's a good point, Michael -- thanks for making the distinction. I'm going to change my post to reflect that. It's not really fair to lump all music publishers in with the RIAA. And I totally agree about Google -- I can hardly wait for them to introduce Google Kitchen, where you type in ingredients and they find recipes for you, and then we'll hear how that's the best thing since sliced bread was invented :-)

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