Despite underwhelming support, Google Music Beta released today

Today, Google is expected to announce the release of downloads to its Music Beta streaming service at an event in Los Angeles. The only problem: Many major record labels are not yet on board.

Universal Music Group is scheduled to complete its contract with the online superpower today, so expect to see your favorite Universal artists on the site. However, Warner Music Group and Sony/BMG have not completed contracts. And with Sony’s recent acquisition of EMI’s publishing, there will be a lot of acts not appearing on the Google service.

To make up for the lack of big names that will appear on the service, Google is setting up a big time event for the release.  Mr. Brainwash — the “artist” depicted in the provocative documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop” — will host the event in his private studio and the Android Youtube channel will broadcast the happenings.

The issues that arise with the launch of the downloading service is that iTunes will still have an edge over Google. With the lack of artists on Google’s service, consumers will most likely stick with the Apple music store because virtually every artists is available there.

Google’s music downloading service now has to compete with Apple’s new Match service and the Cloud.