Google, MTV’s Urge, Amazon and Mobile Companies Line Up To Challenge iTunes

Watch out iTunes, Napster, Yahoo!, and Rhapsody.  Here comes the competition!

The tech and music worlds are increasingly convinced that Google is getting into the music download business  This comes hot on the heels of a meeting at Google last week with top music industry brass and a promise in a stock analysts meeting to "broaden its business by expanding into media downloading". (Addict3d.org)  The hope is that Google will make variable track pricing an option as well as provide some kind of subscription service.  Record labels have been frustrated by market leader iTunes’ unwillingness to budge on either front.

But the MTV and Microsoft partnership Urge is also set to launch later this year and is already using MTV’s clout to encourage exclusive content and creative bundling.  In a recent issue of Fast Company MTV head Kevin Toffler said "technology helps us rethink all of the complimentary content that goes with songs".  One plan is to "re-create the lost art of album covers.  Picture The Strokes putting out inexpensive Flash animation for each song on their new record…We can create a different album than the one you would buy in the store."

Rumors of an Amazon download store are everywhere with the company reportedly taking meetings across the music industry spectrum.  Some signs point to an Amazon sold player which could provide ease of use similar to the iTunes/iPod combo.  Certainly Amazon’s trusted brand name and experience selling CD’s on the web would give it a leg up particularly with consumers over 30.

Cell companies are also getting more aggressively into music and some believe the allure of carrying  a singe cell/music/video device may help that sector explode.  Sprint has signaled that it will be expanding their mobile music offers perhaps including a subscription service and Verizon continues to aggressively expand their mobile download offerings which now exceed 1 million tracks including a lot of independent label content. Meanwhile Cingular is taking the approach that they want to enhance rather than compete with existing download services by partnering with others like iTunes.  The company claims that  3/4 of its customers would rather side load onto a cell rather than download over the air. (Digital Music News)

Each download approach has it’s on merits and limitations and none may turn out to be an "iPod Killer".  But combined they may break Apple’s dominance in the marketplace; and competition has always proven to be good for the consumer.

UPDATE: The Orchard, perhaps the largest digital distributor of indie labels, has just inked a deal with youth branded mobile upstart Amp’d to make its 800,000 track music and video catalog available via the cell carrier.