HP Might Hit the Cloud with New Music Service
That’s right folks, another cloud-based music service provider might just be throwing its hat in the ring.
Not long ago, Amazon was the first major brand to release a service that hosts some of your music library in the their cloud, giving Amazon cloud users the ability to stream their music from any mobile device. Amazon was first to the music hosting party by opting not to make nice with record labels, claiming it had every legal right to offer such a service without their blessing.
Coming to an monetary arrangement with record labels is just why the likes of Spotify, the extremely popular UK-based streaming music service, has yet to officially announce that its service is available to the US.
Now it seems HP is entering the music cloud game as well. According to articles like this one and this one, HP is planning on using cloud-based music services to entice tablet users to buy their forthcoming TouchPad devices.
The key takeaway here is that another company might be offering cloud music services before both Google and Apple – the two companies that were supposed to be the odds on favorites all along to race to the finish line with cloud-based music services.
The thing is, it’s Google and it’s Apple, so even when they don’t do something, it’s pretty huge news. I know I can’t be alone in wondering what must be happening internally that is forcing them to allow the likes of HP and Amazon to beat them to the punch. (Think about it – when’s the last time you said to yourself, “wow – HP really out did Google on that one!” Yeah, I can’t remember either.)
However fascinating the reasons might be, the fact remains that the longer Google and Apple drag their feet before offering cloud-based music services, the more competition they’re welcoming into the music cloud market. By the time they enter the ring, the market for such services might be too saturated to make the splash either company might have been hoping for.
Post by Alex Horowitz
