Google Music here soon

The service would operate through computer browsers and Google’s increasingly popular Android mobile phones to allow both streaming and downloadable music, the report said.

Apple currently controls some 80 per cent of digital music sales via its iTunes store and the music industry has “rolled out the red carpet for Google” as a way to crack Apple’s dominance, the report said.

Talks are currently centred on whether the service would run on a subscription or a la carte basis and on whether the a free-streaming music service would be ad-supported or built in to the cost of the phone.

In recent months Google’s Android has emerged as the main competitor to Apple’s iPhone, and the music service would place the two companies even more squarely in competition.