Jeremiah's Music Blog: Who won't be using Google Checkout? Artists.

Who won't be using Google Checkout? Artists.

Last week, I'd sent an email to Google's Checkout team asking whether or not Checkout would be appropriate and easy for me to integrate into my site as a means for facilitating ecommerce transactions. I'm interested in the service because I (currently) have a lot of trust in the Google brand, and have become quite enamored with their GMail and Calendar products.

Alas, Google has dashed my hopes. From their email reply:

"At this time, Google Checkout is designed for transactions involving
tangible goods, not digital goods or services such as software or music
downloads.

To answer your second question, there is no need for a previous
relationship with a credit card processor in order to use Google Checkout.
Instead, our program provides that relationship for you."

Google pointed me to their Content Policy which doesn't specifically list "music" as a prohibited item - the only item even close is "Copyrighted Media - Unauthorized copies of books, music....". That's odd to me because as the *sole* rights holder of my own work, I'm certainly empowered to sell my work as I see fit. Further, I think Google's missing a *huge* opportunity to not only further the Google brand, but provide an desperately needed service to musicians.

I hope Google will take some time to figure out how to extend Checkout to music producers. We'd really like to have it.

Photo by Google.

Posted by Jeremiah at July 8, 2006 08:23 AM | Tag This Post | Digg It!