Google and Apple launch their music services

Itune Match is available in the United States and Google Music could be presented this week. Trailing Amazon, Google and Apple are developing their cloud music service. This week, Apple opened iTunes Match for the United States, which allows users to have their music library in the Internet cloud. The service costs $24,99 annually. In the event that the subscriber's song is on iTunes, Match does not upload it again. It offers access to the copy already available in the Apple store, which has 20 million files. Match does not distinguish between the origin of the theme that the client has stored. It can be purchased from iTunes, copied from a CD or downloaded. The fact that iTunes does not track the origin of the file has already raised suspicion in the recording industry. The titles you own and that are available on iTunes will be listened to in AAC format at 256kbps without DRM (Digital Rights Manager), so it may be the case that the streaming (audition without download) from Match improve the quality of the client's copy. When the file is not available in iTunes, the service will upload it to the cloud. The limit is 25.000 songs.

For its part, Google has called the United States press on November 16 to announce some news that it does not specify. However, the invitation itself gives some clues. The master of ceremonies, it is announced, will be Nigel Tufnel, who is not an employee of Google. He is the guitarist of the group Spinal Tap. There is no doubt, therefore, that the advertisement has to do with music. Google music opened a beta version with restricted access. Now it would be about expanding this access that could be linked to the Google + social network, replicating Facebook, which has already incorporated Spotify. The biggest novelty could be that this service would not only upload the client's files to the Internet cloud but would offer commercial listening to songs from its own catalog. The problem for Google is that it has not reached an agreement with all the major record companies to support it. It has them with Universal, but Sony and Warner continue to express reluctance despite the fact that the industry is interested in the emergence of a service that competes with iTunes to prevent Apple from imposing the rules. One aspect that worries record labels is the linking of Google Music with an Android application that allows content to be shared with the client's contacts.