Google Music (beta) announced

Today, Google released a beta version of their upcoming cloud music service. The service is still not open to the public, but you can request an invitation from Google if you are in the U.S.

Once you do get invited you will be prompted to download a music manager software onto your computer, which you must then use to upload your music from your computer onto Google's cloud. The music manager even imports songs from your iTunes library.

Once you are done you should be able to access your music from anywhere, including your Android device, using the Music app which you need to download as well.

You can store music with a bit rate as high as 320 kbps, and the songs you have recently listened to get cashed, allowing you to listen to them later without internet access.

Music from Google directly competes with the Cloud Player service recently launched by Amazon which also supports Android devices. This along with Apple, who is probably having something similar up their sleeve and ready to reveal in the coming months, will make things interesting in the coming months for Google. We will see how the Music service takes shape and if Google gets all the kinks out.