Not surprisingly, the rumored Google Music service will be tied to its Google+ social network to allow for online music recommendations and discovery, much like Facebook's recent tie-up with music services.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the service—known as Google Music at this point—would allow people to recommend songs on Google+, which would let their friends listen to that song once, for free. For more listening time, those friends would have to fork over 99 cents and download it.
The details come several days after Google's Android chief, Andy Rubin, confirmed at AsiaD that the search giant is working on an expanded music service.
"I think we're close," Rubin said, promising that the Google version "will have a little twist" that is uniquely Google-esque instead of a run-of-the-mill 99-cent MP3 store.
Rubin's comments come several days after the New York Times reported that Google was prepping an MP3 music store that would connect to its existing, cloud-based music storage service. The report said Google was in talks with major labels and was possibly looking to launch ahead of Apple's iTunes Match, which is scheduled to launch later this month.
The Journal said Google might launch even without support from all four major labels, including Sony and Warner Music Group, meaning you might not be able to find selections from all your favorite artists. Those labels apparently have concerns about Google's copyright protections; the company said recently that it has made "considerable progress" on that front.
Google unveiled its music beta service in May, but it was essentially a cloud locker similar to Amazon's Cloud Player offerings. Both companies got some criticism from the labels, who were irked that Google and Amazon did not secure licensing agreements. But Google and Amazon argued that they did not need licenses since they were just offering online storage for music people already owned.
Google has been moving to integrate some of its products with Google+, including Google Reader and Google Apps. It also recently announced plans to kill Google Buzz in order to focus on Google+.
For more, see PCMag's review of Amazon Cloud Player and Google+, as well as the slideshow below.