We’re here at Mr.Brainwash’s Studios in Los Angeles, waiting for a Google “special event” to start at 2pm PST, where the company is most likely going to announce the Google Music store, because that’s what everybody and their mother is saying.
We’ll be live blogging the announcement here at 2pm but you can also watch it on the UStream above.
2:01 — The event is definitely music-related. We’ve been given notebooks that say “Google Music” on them and the music in here is really really LOUD. Also the walls are covered with painting of artists like Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix.
2:07 — We’ve been told to take our seats. It doesn’t look like that many people are here. And the event still hasn’t started. I’m a huge fan of Danny Sullivan’s joke about how it was delayed due to SOPA.
2:11 — Okay it’s started, and they played a video of a turntable switching disks to introduce Google’s Jamie Rosenberg. Rosenberg begins talking about the Google Music beta, and the experience of its million users. Google distributed more than 100 million songs with the beta.
2:14 — Rosenberg says that Google has activated 200 million Android devices and that Google Music is now open to everyone in the US.
2:15 — Google Music is now officially available at music.google.com. It will be free and allow you to stream over 20,00o songs. The tagline is “Turns music lovers into music promotors.”
2:17 — Once a song is available on Google Music, it’s available across the web and on all your mobile devices.
2:18 — The app is integrated with the Android Market, like we reported, and you can buy songs directly from the new Music section. The Music homepage will feature “Staff Pics” and “Promotions.” Every artist’s page will feature recommendations and the app has social integration with Google+. Shares to Google+ will include one free play for a user’s friends.
2:23 — Every day Google will feature a free song of the day in the Android Market. We’re being shown a Coldplay video as an example of exclusive content available on the Android Market.
2:25 — The music store is sorted by artist, song, and album, with artist bios and images on each page.
2:26 — So Google has just announced aGoogle music store, a new version of the music market, an updated version of the web players and new Android and iOS apps.
2:33 — Google is announcing exclusive partnerships with The Rolling Stones, who will put six concerts online as well as Coldplay and Busta Rhymes, who is actually at the event.
2:28 — Universal, Sony EMI, Merlin Records and independent record labels have been announced; Over a thousand labels participating and eight million tracks live today.
2:31 — Execs from Universal, Sony EMI and Merlin are on the stage, “We are very excited about the global roll out of the platform via Android devices.”
2:31 Google Music will also be launching with exclusive content from artists, The Rolling Stones, Busta Rhymes and Coldplay.
2:38 Google is now describing Artists pages (called Hubs) at music.google.com/artists, which artists can set up for $25. Artists will be able to sell songs on YouTube against their music videos. Google talks about how artists like DJ Tiesto are already using the Artist Hubs.
2:43 T-Mobile is here because T-Mobile customers will be able to pay for Google Music directly through their phone bill. T-Mobile guy is talking about their 4G network, saying that mobile audio makes up 15% of the data on their network.
2:46 — T-Mobile guy is talking about exclusive content deals with again Busta Rhymes and Maroon Five. “Exclusive” keeps getting brought up over and over again.
2:48 — “Music you won’t find anywhere else” is seems to be Google’s competitive advantage here.
2:49: The talk ends with “Google Music is open for business.”