It's not often that I get into the "beta" door — usually I don't try.

But I asked for, and received, and "invite" to use Google Music Beta, the new streaming music service by Google.

This is the newest development in the music industry.  In the OLD days, you would have to buy the music in some tangible form (LP, cassette, CD, etc.).  In the somewhat OLD days, you would just by the digitized song, and put on to something tangible (your iPod, computer) to listen to it.

But NOW, we're moving to an age where your music collection is stored in one place, and it streams to you over the Internet/WiFi.  Where is it stored?  In the "cloud".

Amazon came out with its cloud service; so did Google.  Apple came out with its version yesterday.

But this is about Google.  How does it work?

First it scanned by computer for all my music (some 7,000 worth it says).  Then it uploaded all those songs to Google's computers (I was well within the 20,000 song limit).  And that was that.

Now I can access my songs through any Internet connected computer, or phone app.  This morning I listened to a song streaming to my phone, and I honestly couldn't tell any difference from when that song was actually stored on my phone.

So far, so good.