Los Angeles – Amid more than a year of negotiations, Google (NASD: GOOG) offered to pay more than $100 million up front to the major record labels for licenses to create a cloud music service, BusinessWeek reported, citing two music executives familiar with the discussions.
Google eventually launched its Music Beta cloud service without securing any additional licenses from the labels.
According to BusinessWeek’s sources, talks between Google and the labels “broke down over the music industry’s concern that search results in Google and YouTube often point to pirated music.”
“We’ve been in active negotiations with the labels with mixed results,” Zahava Levine, director of content partnerships for Android, told BusinessWeek. “We want to help them sell their artists’ music and have a lot to offer given the broad reach of Android and Google generally.”
Rival Amazon.com (NASD: AMZN) also launched its Cloud Drive music locker service without securing additional licenses from the labels, while Apple (NASD: AAPL) has reportedly signed three of the four majors and is in talks with publishers as well about licenses for its expected cloud service.
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http://tinyurl.com/4ylmqpj (BusinessWeek)
