Google?s new music streaming service is the latest sign that the Apple iTunes model for music is starting to look outdated as users increasingly migrate to cloud-based subscription services such as Spotify.

Apple is reportedly working on its own streaming music service, but Google made it to market first, announcing Google Play Music All Access at its annual software developers conference yesterday. While Google may be looking to steal away some of Spotify?s thunder, the latter has the longer history when it comes to knowing what consumers are looking for in a streaming music service.

?Apple?s model was perfect for the time,? said David Bryant, chief creative officer at Organic, San Francisco. ?If you look at the broader trends in cloud-based services, it is simply more economically efficient to have a cloud-based service.

?I love iTunes - I still don?t really understand it because I don?t know where half of my playlists are at any one time,? he said. ?I use Google Play because everything is in the cloud - it just makes life a lot simpler.

?There is definitely a move away from the Apple walled-garden, device storage-based way, which is definitely more archaic and more old fashioned than the cloud-based service. The subscription model is the way to go.?

Late to the game
With music streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora quickly growing and being heartily embraced among mobile users, Google and Apple have both been looking to enter the market.

However, Google could run up against some challenges in trying to gain some traction, especially since the service is not remarkably different from Spotify.

For one thing, Google is a late-comer here, as Spotify has already been in the market for a while, building its chops. It also has some very loyal users.

Spotify is also focused primarily on one thing ? digital music ? while Google is known to develop and try a lot of different services to see what sticks. This could be a challenge in the music category as consumers tend to be passionate about music.

?Google tries a lot of things - that is in their nature,? Mr. Bryant said. ?They will go out and experiment with 20 different products, and they will see which one catches on and then they will optimize off of the back of that.

?Which is a very, very different business model from somebody waking up one day and saying, 'I?m going to make the greatest music-streaming service and I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to make it perfect,'? he said.

?I think Spotify has a huge head of steam built up. A lot of its programming is very tricky that allows them to stream very high-quality music in a way that most streaming companies like Pandora just aren?t sophisticated enough to develop that kind of work.?

Music is social
Spotify has also focused on getting all the rights in place for this kind of service for some time, which can be tricky. It has also already accumulated a lot of data about what people are willing to listen to and what they will spend.

The other issue is why exactly Google is looking to offer a music streaming service. It could be a move to boost some of its other strategies, such as mobile advertising and its social network Google +.

?I think Google may be doing this to help bolster support for Google +, rather than the other way around,? Mr. Bryant said.

?Spotify created Spotify and then they looked at places like Facebook to make that experience more interesting,? he said. ?That was a peripheral function for Spotify ? the ability for social sharing of music.

?I think Google might be bringing in a music service in order to populate Google + more. That might be putting the cart before the horse a little bit.?

All Access
Google Play Music All Access enables users to stream songs on-demand to their computer or Android device for $9.99 a month. It adds another layer to the company?s existing music store for Google Play, which already offers some cloud-based services.

Google has the potential to take music discovery to the next level by integrating its full suite of services, such as YouTube?s music video content.

Features include the ability to incorporate both local tracks and streaming music into one integrated searchable library, something the competition does not offer. There is also a recommendation engine, the Explore feature, which is designed to pique users? interest with new music they may not have already discovered.

?The challenge is to establish Google Music as an entertainment brand/destination, while brands like Spotify, Pandora and Twitter #music have established themselves as respected leaders in a saturated internet music category,? said Desmond Marzette, creative strategist at Zambezi, Venice Beach, CA.

?There is an opportunity to elevate the music discovery service to include content beyond audio,? he said. ?Google Music can do more than deliver music; it can deliver the artist via YouTube, Google+ and even search.?

The marketing angle
Users can also create radio stations based around particular artists and give the thumbs down to songs they do not like.

There is a Listen Now feature that highlights new releases.

The price for the service is $9.99 per month, with Google offering a 30-day free trial and a lower monthly fee of $7.99 for those who sign up by June 30.

From an advertising perspective, it will enable Google to collect more user data and to enrich ad targeting by understanding music preferences as well as create more incremental ad inventory.

?They're going to have to start thinking about how to monetize it,? said Marc Poirier, co-founder and executive vice president of business development at Acquisio, Brossard, Canada. ?Based on how they have operated thus far, I think they're going to support the service with advertising and offer a paid, ad-free upgrade.

?Mobile devices and apps introduce interesting opportunities,? he said. ?One of them is to use the AdMob framework for ads in apps, but down the road I imagine location based advertising will come into play.

?Perhaps some standard form of audio ad, generated from templates, could draw in users of the music service who are geographically close to the advertiser's store.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York