1. Geographic Lockouts

The three biggest product updates in online music over the past month all have one thing in common: most of the world cannot use these products. Facebook’s integration of Spotify and other streaming services; Apple’s iTunes Match; Google Music (at least when it comes to the new MP3 store, which is a big part of the appeal for Google Music).

With iTunes Match, Google’s new MP3 store and Amazon’s MP3 store, you have to be a resident of the U.S. in order to use them. As for the streaming services, they too have limited reach. Spotify for example is only available in certain European countries and in the USA. This means that Facebook’s integration of streaming music services isn’t available to a large proportion of its 800 million user base. To put some numbers around that, more than 75% of Facebook users live outside of the USA. That’s 600 million people, most of whom probably cannot access the streaming music features.

This frustrating state of affairs is of course due to the music industry. Record labels are trying desperately to hold onto the reins of power with licensing terms that are outdated and differ across countries. The whole point of the World Wide Web is to give people across the entire world equal opportunities to create and consume content. Yet a large percentage of the Web is denied the chance to use these wonderful new online music services.

OK, this is a first world problem and certainly not something to do a Live Aid about. All I’m saying is that I don’t live in the U.S. and I’m extremely frustrated that I cannot use most of the best online music services.

2. Inconsistent User Experience

If you’re fortunate enough to be able to use these services in the first place, you’ll have noticed many flaws in the user experience.

Facebook’s integration of Spotify and other streaming music services, labeled frictionless sharing, posts every single song you listen to onto your Facebook news feed. While it requires the user to turn this functionality on, the problem is in the lack of granular control. Once you turn it on, there’s no way you can tell Facebook: just publish the songs that make me look cool to my friends. Or: don’t post that I’m listening to Justin Bieber. It posts everything, like it or not.

Google Music has some user experience oddities too, which Danny Sullivan outlined in full. He also pointed out similar issues with iTunes and Spotify. In my own limited testing of Google Music (through a VPN) I found it odd that I could not share music to Google+ that I had uploaded myself. Yet I could share a song I’d gotten through the Android Market.

Then consider the differences in sharing functionality in Facebook and Google+. In Facebook the music sharing is automatic and all-encompassing. In Google+, it’s restricted and a manual process. Two opposite ends of the sharing spectrum – and plenty of differences in-between, among Facebook, Google+ and many other sharing services.

In some ways this is just what you get with intense competition, but on the other hand I hope best practices evolve over time for music sharing. So that I can share any song I want to, in roughly the same manner, across any social network.

3. Your Music Is All Over The Place

Related to the user experience problem is the fact that one’s music is becoming difficult to manage, because there are so many different ways to listen to and/or buy music (again, assuming you even have access to the services).

Say I download a song from the Android Store; it now lives in my Google Music app. Sure I can sync it to iTunes or wherever I like. But it requires manual set-up or action. You’ll quickly lose track of where all of your music is.

Or say that I discover a brilliant new album on Spotify. I listen to it a few times, then I move on to other music. But I never bought that album, so I don’t own it. That’s all well and good, but if I use iTunes as my primary music store then I don’t have that album there. Sure I can just buy it, but I’ve already listened to it a few times and I may not listen to it again for months or even years. Besides, if I’ve stumped up for a monthly subscription to Spotify then I may not feel inclined to shell out more money for that particular album. My point is: some of your music now lives in a local app like iTunes, some is on a service like Spotify, some you may have discovered on Google+, and so on. It’s all over the place and you’re relying on a bunch of apps and services now.

While sync services like iTunes Match help with some of this (particularly listening to your music across devices), it’s going to be a challenge to figure out where your music should ‘live’ and what music you still want to ‘own’. This isn’t as big of a problem as the above two issues, but it’s still something that Apple, Google and co should help their users manage.

Those are my current three gripes with the online music services. The biggest for me is the geographic restrictions. What’s your main beef – if any – with this new wave of online music services?

Last May at Google I/O, we launched Music Beta by Google with a clear ambition: to help people access their music collections easily from any device. Music Beta enabled you to upload your personal music collection (up to 20,000 songs) for free to the cloud so you could stream it anywhere, any time. Today, the beta service evolves into a broader platform: Google Music. Google Music is about discovering, purchasing, sharing and enjoying digital music in new, innovative and personalized ways.

Google Music helps you spend more time listening to your collection and less time managing it. We automatically sync your entire music library—both purchases and uploads—across all your devices so you don’t have to worry about cables, file transfers or running out of storage space. We’ll keep your playlists intact, too, so your “Chill” playlist is always your “Chill” playlist, whether you’re on your laptop, tablet or phone. You can even select the specific artists, albums and playlists you want to listen to when you’re offline.

Purchase and share
We also want to make it easy and seamless for you to grow your music collection. Today, we added a new music store in Android Market, fully integrated with Google Music.

The store offers more than 13 million tracks from artists on Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and the global independent rights agency Merlin as well as over 1,000 prominent independent labels including Merge Records, Warp Records, Matador Records, XL Recordings and Naxos. We’ve also partnered with the world’s largest digital distributors of independent music including IODA, INgrooves, The Orchard and Believe Digital.

You can purchase individual songs or entire albums right from your computer or your Android device and they’ll be added instantly to your Google Music library, and accessible anywhere.

Good music makes you want to turn up the volume, but great music makes you want to roll down the windows and blast it for everyone. We captured this sentiment by giving you the ability to share a free full play of a purchased song with your friends on Google+.

Exclusively on Google Music
We’re celebrating our launch with a variety of music that you won’t find anywhere else, much of it free. There’s something for everyone, with a variety of free tracks to choose from:

• The Rolling Stones are offering an exclusive, never-before-released live concert album, Brussels Affair (Live, 1973), including a free single, “Dancing with Mr. D.” This is the first of six in an unreleased concert series that will be made available exclusively through Google Music over the coming months.
• Coldplay fans will find some original music that’s not available anywhere else: a free, live recording of “Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall”, a five-track live EP from their recent concert in Madrid and a remix of “Paradise” by Tiësto.
• Busta Rhymes’s first single from his upcoming album, Why Stop Now (feat. Chris Brown), is available for free.
• Shakira’s live EP from her recent concert in Paris and her new studio single, “Je L’Aime à Mourir” are both being offered up free.
• Pearl Jam are releasing a live album from their 9/11/11 concert in Toronto, free to Google Music users.
• Dave Matthews Band are offering up free albums from two live concerts, including new material from Live On Lakeside.
• Tiësto is offering up a new mix, “What Can We Do” (feat. Anastacia), exclusively to Google Music users.

Artist hub
Whether you’re on a label or the do-it-yourself variety, artists are at the heart of Google Music. With the Google Music artist hub, any artist who has all the necessary rights can distribute his or her own music on our platform, and use the artist hub interface to build an artist page, upload original tracks, set prices and sell content directly to fans—essentially becoming the manager of their own far-reaching music store. This goes for new artists as well as established independent artists, like Tiesto, who debuts a new single on Google Music today.

Starting today, Google Music is open in the U.S. at market.android.com, and over the next few days, we will roll out the music store to Android Market on devices running Android 2.2 and above. You can also pick up the new music app from Android Market and start listening to your music on your phone or tablet today. And don’t forget to turn your speakers up to eleven.

Posted by Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President, Mobile

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