on-demand

As expected, Google formally announced its new online music subscription service, Google Play Music All Access today at its Google I/O developer conference.

The company is touting the service as "radio without rules," according to The Verge. It reports the All Access service "allows users to create radio stations from particular artists — providing comparable functionality without any of the limitations," but went into no further detail. One might assume the "functionality" is "comparable" to Pandora and other such services, but "without any of the limitations" of the statutory webcast license, which prohibits on-demand song plays, going backwards in a stream to re-hear a song, etc. (We delved a little further into these matters yesterday here.) 

By and large, it's music subscription of the Spotify/Rdio sort: $9.99/month unlimited on-demand access and playlist features, for computers and Android devices. Listeners can access both "local" music (which they have stored on their computer or handheld) as well as Google's streaming-available collection, as a single "master library." The service includes a "recommendation engine" to help listeners discover new music based on their preferences. Google is offering a 30-day free trial, and if you sign up by the end of June, it's just $7.99/month.

Read more from The Verge here.

Make way for the big boys.

"Companies like Google, Apple and Facebook are eyeing the streaming and on-demand music business now dominated by smaller niche companies such as Pandora and Spotify. When they do -- and most analysts agree it's really just a matter of time -- they could give nearly everyone the ability to listen to whatever they want, whenever they want -- and mostly for free," wrote San Jose Mercury News' Heather Somerville yesterday.

If true, this brings up a whole host of issues, some of which Somerville explores, like the impact on artists, consumers' relationship with music, and others. But where does it leave Internet radio: both pureplays like Pandora, and music broadcasters who'll rely more and more on digital efforts to grow? Smaller companies will have to become even more creative and agile to offer a value proposition the larger companies can't -- a sort of "boutique" existence, catering to niche and local audiences. 

"There is no doubt that when companies this large enter into the field, it will be disruptive," Jonathan Handel, a media and entertainment attorney, told the paper.

Read more here.

Apple is reportedly in talks with Beats Electronics on a possible music streaming service partnership.

Sources say Apple CEO Tim Cook and Internet products chief Eddy Cue met with Beats CEO Jimmy Iovine to learn more about the Beats' upcoming "Daisy" streaming music service.

Relatedly, Beats announced yesterday $60 million in new funding for the project from an investment group that includes Warner Music owner Len Blavatnik, to bankroll the service's planned late-2013 launch.

It was early last September when word first leaked that Apple was planning to launch its own customizable streaming music service (RAIN coverage here) -- but on that was more of an Internet radio/Pandora competitor.

Beats is the Dr. Dre/Iovine company that makes the popular Beats headphones, and owns music subscription service MOG (which is being rebuilt as "Daisy"). At CES in January, Iovine told AllThingsDigital's Peter Kafka he'd long been trying to push the late Apple founder Steve Jobs towards creating a streaming music subscription service (see RAIN coverage here). Also at CES, Iovine and his company named former Yahoo! Music and Topspin CEO Ian Rogers (RAIN coverage here) CEO of Daisy. More on Daisy in RAIN here.

Read more about Apple and Beats from Hypebot.com here and Reuters here.

On-demand streaming service Rdio today began offering Canadians six months free but limited access to its service, without ads. This is for full use of the service, including on-demand listening, playlist creating, social media sharing, etc. 

Free streaming is available through the Web or Rdio's desktop apps for Mac and Windows. A meter at the top of user profile pages lets people know how much free music they have remaining each month.

Rdio's subscription plans range from $4.99/month to the $22.99/month for three people "family" plan.

Samsung is reportedly planning to expand access to its cloud-based Music Hub service to its platform competitors' customers. Meanwhile, Nokia is launching a new premium version of its Nokia Music service for only $3.99 a month in the U.S.

Samsung's "Music Hub is a cloud-based service combining a user's own library with Spotify-style streaming, radio and discovery features. It’s essentially a rival to traditional music stores, online radio, streaming services and cloud locker services all in one package," explains The Next Web.

Nokia's "Music+ will be an ad-free service that lets users skip as many songs as they like rather than being limited to 6 skips per hour. Subscribers will be able to listen to Nokia Mix Radio and add songs to playlists, mark them as favorites, or save playlists to download songs," reports MobileBurn.com.

More from The Next Web on Samsung is here; more from MobileBurn on Nokia+ is here.

Sweden "and its Nordic neighbors have long been seen as early adopters and innovators when it comes to tech trends," writes The Wall Street Journal today.

Today's specific tech trend: Music sales in Sweden are showing double digit growth, powered almost entirely by on-demand, subscription-based streaming services.

The Swedish Recording Industry Association says music sales were up 14% in that country last year. "Digital" music sales (that is, not CDs, vinyl, and cassettes) accounted for 60% of all Swedish music sales in 2012. And 90% of the digital music sales came from streaming.

Spotify, the world's largest streaming service, was founded by Swedes Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon in 2006 and first launched in Sweden in 2008.

Read more in The Wall Street Journal Tech Europe blog here and in RawStory.com here.