Last Summer, reports came out that Google’s negotiations with music publishers were showing promise and that the companies music launch could happen very soon. Well, after months of hearing nothing new, it appears that negotiations with labels are taking a turn for the worst.
The Wall Street Journals’ All Things Digital site is reporting that negotiations between Google and music labels have “broken.” Some inside sources are even claiming that talks have “gone backwards,” despite some previous reports saying that talks had been going smoothly in the past few weeks. While no real explanation has been given as for the turn of events, All Things Digital hinted at two possible reasons, including:
- Negotiations have been held up do to last minute changes in terms made by Google.
- Amazon Cloud’s sudden launch.
It isn’t fair to say that option 2 is the cause of the hold up, since (as Digital Music News points out) it’s quite possible that Google are still working out frustrations and tweaks highlighted in leaked reports. However, with the big stir Amazon has been creating (especially among angry label execs) since its launch a month ago, it wouldn’t be too far stretched to say that it got Google to rethink a few things. Google had been planning to offer a cloud service with the label’s participation, but technically they could go forth without the labels and simply offer online storage for users to access via phones and PCs. The catch, though, is that they wouldn’t be able to sell music. Considering that Google could be a true competitor to Apple, it’s unlikely that they would opt to go the Amazon route.
We’ll keep you posted as more develops.
