During a keynote presentation on the first day of the conference, Google took the wraps off , a service that will enable users to store their music in the and then stream it to any device - tablets, smartphones or PCs.

The company noted that during the beta, will be free, although the eventual price tag was not disclosed. All of the I/O attendees were invited to join the beta. Anyone interested can on the music beta Web site and request an invitation.

"For Google, it's yet another service that can deliver eyeballs to Google pages and advertisers," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. "It's not a music store yet, but can that be far behind? And if it does become a full-fledged music and media store, it has the potential to break 's hammerlock on content providers."

With the Android platform growing rapidly, the music service has a good synergism, Olds added. "As Android devices multiply, it gives Google a bigger and bigger base to sell to," he said. "It also gives Android device sellers a powerful selling point vs. and ."

Music Beta by Google will compete with , a cloud-based service announced in late March. It also will vie with other industry players like Apple's hugely popular iTunes and the music-streaming service Rhapsody.