Google’s plan to challenge Apple’s dominance in the music marketplace is advancing more rapidly than expected, say music industry sources.
The search giant’s Android whiz, VP Andy Rubin, is said to be having “accelerated” talks with a music-industry group publishing firm in hopes of gaining digital publishing rights to as many songs as possible to enable the launch of a Google Music store, the sources said.
The Mountain View, Calif., company has said little about its plans to enter the digital music download business — now dominated by Apple’s iTunes, with about a 28 percent market share, and Amazon and Wal-Mart, each with a 12 percent slice.
But the state and pace of the talks with the music industry’s publishing firm, the Harry Fox Agency, means a Google Music store could open in November or December, sources said.
That Google’s Rubin is now speaking to the Harry Fox Agency is a sure sign that talks with record labels have gone smoothly enough for Google to move to the next level. The New York-based Harry Fox Agency collects and distributes license fees to music publishers and houses rights to some 27,000 songs.
The Harry Fox Agency did not return a call for comment.
Google reps had no details to provide about their new service.
The talks with the agency will now focus on pricing, what rights are available and how the two business models might be established.
The music industry largely feels it ceded too much territory to Apple when it launched iTunes, and a rival product from Google could help them gain more leverage — not to mention better terms when it to its shares of the per-download revenue.
The Google Music download service would be linked to its search service.