Google will announce a music service later Tuesday, but the news appears to be a rather poorly-kept secret.

According to Bloomberg and others Google’s music store will do the same thing Amazon and iTunes do: sell individual music downloads for $.99 to $1.29. The twist: each song will apparently include some sort of sharing feature — a rumor that borne out by the apparent refusal of Warner Music Group to license the service yet, according to Bloomberg, due to “pricing and piracy concerns.”

Warner’s refusal to sign off is actually a good sign for Google, because it must be doing something interesting with this sharing feature. Apparently, the way it will work is that with each purchase, the buyer will have the opportunity to share the song with one or two people as a stream, most likely within the Google+ social network. (This sounds right, because Warner is a notorious holdout against free streaming.)

Bloomberg holds Google’s feet to the fire for launching a music store eight years after Apple launched iTunes, the first digital music store in the world to sell music from all (then five) major labels.

Here are four reasons that Google, which seems to be all about music this year, would bother selling music:

Continue reading ‘Why Would Google Sell Music? 4 Big Reasons’ …

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