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HP working on a cloud music service?

Categories: HP, Rumors,
Tags: ,
By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 at 4:30 AM
HP working on a cloud music service?

If Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft can do it, why can’t HP? Honestly I see no reason why they shouldn’t want to go for the music lovers around the world. The rumor is that they are in the middle of talks with the big labels to launch a service that would not only allow users to stream their own music from the cloud, but also songs they don’t own. In that sense they could circumvent the process of creating an online music store entirely. Then at some point in the future, they could add individual songs to the catalog, presuming that’s the idea here.

Either way, it’s good to hear another strong contender will enter the cloud services market. It’s only natural for HP to work on web-based services that will sing along their webOS platform.

However, I must say that if I were at the HP helm I would seriously consider acquiring some of the existing streaming music providers like Pandora, Rdio and Spotify to get technology, people and existing subscriber base. Each of the three companies shouldn’t be out of range for HP’s massive budget. What do you think?

[Via: UnwiredView, image from ubergizmo]

About The Author

Dusan Belic

Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.

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  • Anonymous

    I think HP needs to aim bigger than just music, they need to build a platform which can deliver books, movies, TV shows, Games and Apps world wide. 

    As far as I know there nothing on the market that is up for sell that offers all of that, the only ones that offer all of those are Google, Amazon and Apple and I doubt HP has deep enough pockets to buy out any of those.

     Also HP already have there own extensive server farm able to run such a service, they probably end up wasting time and money rebuilding any services they bought to run on there own infrastructure. 

    Also the tricky thing about buying these services is that these companies loose there music licenses if they are sold to a third party, it what prevent Google from buy Spotify and the reason why Apply had to shut down lala, Apply did not have the require licenses to run the service. 

    HP bought Melodeo last year, they acquire at some of the technology they need. An I am sure HP has much of the technology already to run a cloud service, look at HP Cloud print product for example.

  • http://www.n1wireless.com N1Wireless

    Duscan – good article and good point. I think HP is almost forced to enter this market to keep competing with their competitors and keep innovating for users and keep developing the HP brand. Cloud is a major focus for these companies right now, especially to compete w/ Apple.

    Joelhttp://www.n1wireless.com