Apple recently reached into its very deep pockets and paid $3 billion for Beats. The company that’s popular for premium audio products launched a new music streaming service called Beats Music a few months back. Even though it only has a couple of hundred thousand users for now its believed that Beats Music was one of the main reasons why Apple became interested in the company. Now it looks like Google doesn’t want to be left behind. A new report claims that the search engine giant is in the market for a new music streaming service.
Like Apple, Google too has pretty deep pockets, it won’t have a problem spending a few billion on a similar service. There are a couple of options available that have significantly larger paying user bases than Beats Music.
The NYPost hears from sources within the music industry that Google has been “quietly surveying the landscape.” There haven’t been any official talks as yet apparently so it may take a while before we hear what service Google is trying to acquire.
Google Play Music All Access is its current offering, which is about to be internally challenged. Once again there are rumors about the YouTube “Music Pass,” a similar subscription service that’s reportedly slated for an October launch.
Some speculate that the best option for Google is to acquire Spotify. With a 40 million strong subscriber base, out of which 10 million are premium paying subscribers, it already has a $4 billion valuation and is set for a IPO this fall. Other possible services include Pandora, already a public company, as well as Rdio and Rhapsody.
Google is tightlipped about its future plans for music streaming, provided that it has any. Its still to early to say if its really going to make an acquisition, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this goes.
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