Internal Google Music Testing Has Begun
Following yesterday’s news that Google will soon be debuting in-app purchases and letting developers test the feature ahead of time for their applications, rumors out of CNET say Google is now focusing on pushing their new Music service out of the door and onto handsets and tablets.
Google tipped us all off to Google Music at last year’s I/O, but they’ve been very quiet on the matter since. The rumor is likely true considering the folks at XDA were able to use the service (but not to its full capacity) at one point using a version of the music player they pulled from Honeycomb.
Google’s Music service is essentially their iTunes and will allow users to buy and download music. Android users should soon be able to buy music and have it automatically synced to their devices and will have the option to stream all of their music instead of having it sit on their SD cards.
Google’s looking to do things right with this launch as they’re reportedly still negotiating deals with top record labels and publishers. They faced heavy resistance from network operators on their Google TV service and still have yet to get the big guys back on board.
The difference between Google TV’s problems and Google Music is that Google can’t simply aggregate content from various legal web sources. We’re not sure how long the talks will take and how long testing will carry on, but if they speed things up we could be seeing a true unveiling at the anniversary of the very show they announced it.