On Wednesday, Google launched a feature which will be melody to the ears of music-lovers – Google Magnifier – a new music discovery site. The site features videos of live performances, artist interviews, and free music downloads designed to be added to the Google Music locker.
A Google official blogpost says, “Our goal has been to help you fall in love with your music all over again and now we are taking that idea one step ahead by introducing Magnifier.”
Elaborating on the genesis of Magnifier, Tim Quirk, Google’s Head of Music Programming said, “When I was in junior high school, I had a friend whose older cousin lived in England, and that cousin would always send my friend great new records we usually knew nothing about, except that if the cousin liked them there was a very good chance we would, too.”
Quirk likens Magnifier to the cousin in England who does not live across the other side of the Atlantic in reality and users don’t have to wait weeks for the music to arrive. “We will bring you new music everyday. Sometimes it will be songs which you have not heard of by artists you have. Sometimes, it will be new artists, who we think, deserve more attention. And, sometimes there will be video interviews and live performances.”
You can view a Magnifier interview with Fizz & Tantrums below:
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Quirk assured that users could access this service for free and could add any or all of the songs to their Music Beta library instantly.
On the launching day, Magnifier featured Grammy-nominated Indie rock band ‘MY Morning Jacket’. Google is giving away two of their tracks to Music Beta Users, one of which is exclusive to Magnifier – a live performance of “The Day is Coming”. To get these tracks and other songs in the Free Song Archive, users need a Music Beta Account. Users can go to Magnifier, find songs they want, click on the “Add Free Music” buttons and the tracks will be added to their library in Music Beta.
Magnifier is an effort by Google to single out its Music Beta service from competitors such as Amazon’ cloud Music, the recently launched Spotify for digital music and Apple’s forthcoming iCloud service, which is expected to be launched in the fall.
In May, Google launched Music Beta, a music-storage service which allows users to upload their personal music collection to the cloud and listen to it on the Web or their Android phone or tablet.
The Google Music service is still invite-only, but the company is asking anyone interested in the free downloads to request an invitation, which suggests that it may be ready to spruce up the service.
Yet, what Google crucially needs now is music licenses. Without the licenses, Google Music will continue to remain a first step which does not advance. No licenses means Google Music users must upload all of their tracks to the online locker individually. A licensed service would mean that it could just scan user’s libraries and match them against a database of songs in the cloud. Since, Google is now giving away free tracks on the Magnifier, it’s possible that there’s been some movement on the licensing front.
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