Music Beta by Google continues to cause reverberations around the industry, with briefings from both sides providing more detail on Google’s decision to launch without licences. All Things Digital has plenty of info on what Google wanted to launch: including a music store, a scan-and-match cloud locker to avoid lengthy upload times, the option for users to sample songs in full once, and share songs they owned with friends in a legal way. It also talks about Google’s desire to launch a Pandora-beating interactive radio service. Meanwhile, Billboard isolates the three key sticking points in negotiations with rightsholders. It says Google was willing to pay upfront advances to labels, but fell foul of differing demands from different companies. It also highlights disagreements over whether potentially-pirated files could be uploaded into Google’s locker, and some labels linking the talks with a desire to see Google remove links to pirate sites from its search engine. It also hints at pressure from Apple on rightsholders, and Google not helping its case by changing the details of what it planned to launch.
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