Google has announced it will be launching it’s own “digital music locker” service, similar to Amazons Cloud Player which was launched in March. Google will launch its service called Music Beta at Google I/O developer conference on Tuesday.

In much the same way as Amazons offering, the cloud-based music service will allow users to upload their music to Google’s platform, and listen to it on Andriod powered phones and tablets, and well as computers. This gives the service much wider user base than Amazons offer, and makes it that much more useful.

But like Amazon, Google is not thought to have made done any deals with major labels.

“A couple of major labels were not as collaborative and frankly were demanding a set of business terms that were unreasonable and did not allow us to build a product or a business on a sustainable business,” Jamie Rosenberg, Director for Digital Content for Android, told the New York Times.

With Amazon and now Google moving ahead without the support of record labels, it does put the music industry as a whole in a difficult position. If they decide to take legal action against Amazon and Google, they risk looking evil in the public’s eye, and further widening the void between the industry and the user. But the flip side is, if they don’t take legal action it sets a president for other music services to do the same.

It seems to me this is a pivotal moment for the music industry, a point at which they will be finally forced to change their narrow perception of the internet, and admit that the business practices of the industry has to change to accommodate this era of technology, or risk being left behind.

Words: Matt Auckland, Source: Business Insider