Why Google has everything it needs to disrupt the music business
Hi, hypernarrative is a blog by Wilbert Baan about Art, Media and Technology with a focus on interactive storytelling. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed with Google or Netvibes. I'll post a few messages a week. Thanks for visiting!

Since the record music can be played everywhere without actually having to transfer the musician. This changed how we consumed music. A complete industry was build around transferable music, the ‘record industry’.
The web is not just a network connecting computers anymore. The web is a virtual layer of information accessible almost everywhere, anytime via broadband, UMTS, wifi and cable. The availability of this network and its role as real-time meta information network will only grow.
The web is already changing how we consume music. The availability is like radio, but the tunes you can listen to are personal. Technically you could listen to any song you like at any time you like from any place you like.
The only thing we need is a library of music and a business model. This is where Google comes in. When a website grows as exponential as Google did you need a serious hardware model to support the demand. You need servers and broadband connections around the globe. The hardware structure and back-end Google has (in combination with YouTube) is probably one of the most advanced in the world. The amount of data they send up and down the lines of our network connections makes them a very import player in data exchange.
Amazon build a new model on top of their original business. With S3 and Ec2 Amazon started to sell hosting and computing, a smart move since they already developed an enormous infrastructure for amazon.com. This infrastructure equals a value that makes it a serious hosting competitor in price and service.
Why Google for music? Google has experience with indexing large amounts of information and they know how to retrieve meaning from information. Google has experience with web-players, mobile platforms, plug-ins, widgets, trust and a payment model. They sit on all the required knowledge. All they have to do is mixing the components together.
The future of music won’t be about files or discs, it will be about listening your favorites, your friends favorites or songs recommended by websites and smart collectives. Music still has value, it doesn’t have to be free. I think a subscription model could work. You pay $20,- to $50,- a month to a company (Google in this example) and you are allowed to listen any music you like. With this money Google pays artists based on listened percentages. It’s all about micro payments and since everyone is an artist nowadays, everyone should be able to upload its files to the Google Music directory.
On top of this Google could include its adwords system related to what you are listening. A system that has a proven effect in giving advertising power to the niche.
There is already a Google Music player. Just find someone to connect the dots.

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