Here’s more proof of the imminent launch of the Google Music Store, which is Google’s rumored jump into the digital music selling business.
Apparently, Android users that went to music.google.com from their mobile browsers were greeted with a landing page that suggested they can “shop millions of songs in Android Market.”
First noticed on German Android site newsondroid, the landing page promoted the Google Music Beta app for Android – touting that you can store up to 20,000 songs in its cloud locker. Just under that, however, we saw the evidence for the fact that Google is coming to the music-selling party.
As noted by Alexia Tsotsis at TechCrunch, that “shop Android Market” link didn’t work, but was set to redirect to market.android.com/music.
It looks like someone realized the mistake, because the whole part about shopping millions of songs is no longer a part of that page.
We first got wind of the upcoming Google Music Store a couple weeks ago, as sources leaked the fact that Google was planning an imminent release. Last week, Google’s Andy Rubin said that Google was “close” to launching a music store and that it “will have a little twist.”
We also learned that the Google Music Store will probably be worked into Google+, possibly in a way similar to how Spotify works on Facebook. Google+ users will be able to recommend songs to their friends and subscribers, who will then be able to listen to them free of charge one time before making a decision about whether or not to purchase the track.
It’s thought that Google Music Store will be highly integrated into Google Music Beta, which would make sense. Google Music Beta was supposed to come with the ability to purchase songs, but Google had a problem reaching agreements with the big record labels. Apparently, Google is still having issues with that, as it has been reported that Google Music Store will launch without deals from at least 2 of the major 4 labels.