Disconnect between labels, Google

THE BLAME GAME: In his follow-up story on Google’s Music Beta cloud-based storage/player combo, which launched yesterday without the blessings of the Big Four (also see our story), the N.Y. Times’ Ben Sisario examines the gaping cultural chasm between the music and tech sectors. The stubbornness of the labels, he writes, has earned them a particular caricature in Silicon Valley: the bridge troll, demanding payment for passage. “Generally there were demands on the business side that we think were unreasonable and don’t enable us to have a sustainable, scalable music business,” said Zahavah Levine, Google’s lead negotiator. (5/11a)