Google Music?

I've been mulling the idea of Google acquiring Napster as reported a few days ago. The first thought I had was "why?" because this is a space where there are hundreds of competitors worldwide. Not to mention that the deals are setup such that the labels who own the copyrights retain the lionshare of income. As P2P has aptly shown, music may be much in demand but nobody's paying.

But it dawned on me today that it's a pretty simple concept. Google relies on advertisements for the bulk of their revenue. AdSense and AdWords have been hugely successful as evidenced by offerings like Gmail and Blogger. Bringing AdSense to a music offering seems exactly like something Google would want to do.

Streaming music over the Internet like Pandora or Last.fm seems like an integration waiting to happen. And if you're going to acquire a licensed music firm, why not nab the one with a big name? Napster certainly is ripe for the taking, with heavy competition with Real's subscriber-leading Rhapsody.

And since it's Google, I'd envision a basic streaming service that is free with downloads or portable device transfers to cost. That would make things very interesting for digital music if that happened...