UPDATED 12:10 EDT / APRIL 05 2011

Accidental Leak of Android 3.0 Music App Reveals Google Cloud-based MP3 Service

google-android-music-marketplace In the wake of what seems like a mistake by Google, Switched is reporting that the folks from Tech From 10 accidentally stumbled upon a new version Google music app (note: Tech 10 is currently down, 403 Forbidden errors) installed in the Android Market on their Galaxy S,

In what is probably a bit of a big-G whoopsie, the folks at Tech From 10 woke up to find a new, test version of Android Market installed on their Galaxy S.
Visually, the new version is almost identical. The carousel of featured apps has been updated slightly, and apps now have a ‘Content rating,’ but that’s it (image after the break). The interesting bit, however, is the inclusion of alpha and beta apps — most notably, there’s a new version of the Music app, which looks like a scaled-down version of the Android 3.0 Honeycomb Music app (see right).

The best and brightest new feature discovered within the music app happens to be the ability to upload and store music in Google’s cloud (very similar to Amazon’s cloud app), which would allow users to play back their music from any mobile device running the app as long as they have Internet connectivity. While this service isn’t live let—this is an accidental leak, after all, and it’s barely alpha or even beta—but it shows that Google sees streaming music as the next big step.

It’s about time that Google came into the theater with something that takes control in the music market; because Amazon has been dominating that recently and they’ve been doing it with Google’s technology. In a way, Google has been losing out in the streaming-mp3-to-anywhere market literally to their own technology!

It only makes sense that Google would make sure that they had something to wrest some control back.

This push towards permitting people to store their music in cloud-based online lockers and stream it from anywhere is showing real possibility of sparking a sudden surge of similar products. With Google and Amazon entering the fray, other online music retailers—I’m looking at you Apple—will probably start thinking about their entrance strategy. The waters may seem to be a little bit rough right now as no doubt the RIAA will have a strong opinion on the matter, but between Amazon and Google the floodgates will open and this will certainly not go away.

I, for one, am a huge fan of being able to access my media from anywhere. What good is Internet connectivity if I am forced to constantly use up my own limited local storage for something that I use only a limited segment of at any time? The personal cloud does this for me, so it might as well work for my music as well.


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