Google, Apple to Battle Over Music

Since it unveiled iTunes and the iPod in 2003, Apple has enjoyed a relative monopoly on the way we buy and listen to music. This Christmas, that may change.

According to a new report from “Wired,” Google’s VP of engineering and the man responsible for the Android, has been leading talks with music labels to arrange publishing deals for a new download and storage service to rival iTunes.

Of course, as is always the case in these stories, the sources are anonymous and unnamed—but presumably the sources come from the music industry side of the talks.

“Finally here’s an entity with the reach, resources and wherewithal to take on iTunes as a formidable competitor by tying it into search and Android mobile platform,” said a label executive who asked not to be identified. “What you’ll have is a very powerful player in the market that’s good for the music business.”

According to the report, Google aims to have its iTunes rival up and running by Christmas. In many ways Google’s lag in a music download and storage software represents a surprising departure from the two companies’ trajectories: Apple has always been a hardware company first, and invented software to support its hardware. Google has taken the opposite approach, offering its first proprietary hardware only after more than a decade of internet software dominance.

And while it may be surprising that Google has taken this long to enter the music software market, the success of its Android hardware certainly gives it good cause to do so now. According to “Wired” Android is now selling 200,000 units per day, as many as the iPhone. With its own competitor to iTunes, will Android sales outstrip the iPhone?

What’s truly surprising is the adoption rate of Android. Many of us have much greater loyalty to our hardware than software choices. Hardware is tangible and aesthetic, where is software is more mercurial by nature. But as the Apple backlash that flared in response to the iPhone 4 problems shows us, we are loyal to quality above all. Brand loyalty fades faster than user experience.

But perhaps most surprising in all this is despite advances in technology and connection speeds, and the seemingly deafening consumer call for it, neither company seems close to offering a subscription-based streaming service, or “cloud listening” service.

The defining hallmark of both Google and Apple over the last decade has been to invent and offer new technologies that, having never dreamed of their existence, we suddenly couldn’t live without. For the first time, consumers are out in front of the technology companies, not only imagining a new listening experience that doesn’t yet exist, but calling loudly for it.

Apple’s new Ping feature in iTunes, and Google’s presumed new download service, don’t represent the future that music consumers have been calling for. But without the broader hardware and software dominance to support our listening habits, it’s unlikely another competitor like Rdio or Spotify will be able to tip the scales toward that future on their own.