SAN FRANCISCO — In its long-anticipated effort to bring music storage to the cloud, Google debuted its own streaming music service at its I/O developer conference on Tuesday morning.

Dubbed “Music Beta by Google,” the service will act as a “digital locker,” where users can store their music in the cloud instead of on their local hard drives or mobile devices.

After uploading your existing music library to a remote server, you’ll be able to stream your music to your Android phone or web-connected PC. As long as you’re connected to the internet, you’ll be able to access your music wherever you go.

You’ll be able to add up to 20,000 songs, and it’s free while it’s in beta mode.

Like Amazon, which launched a similar service in March, Google does not have licensing deals with the music labels. Billboard named two “bottlenecks,” Sony and Universal Music Group, and said the lack of deals meant Google was able to offer less of a service than it had wanted.

“We’ve been in negotiations with the industry for a different set of features, with mixed results,” Google told Billboard the night before the announcement was made. “[But] a couple of major labels were less focused on innovation and more on demanding unreasonable and unsustainable business terms.”

According to sources familiar with the matter, Google had hoped to let users “beam” their digital music collections into a cloud-based locker system by recognizing the files and mirroring them in the cloud. Google has a reputation for getting what it wants, but instead, due to a breakdown in negotiations with major labels Sony Music and Universal Music Group, Google reportedly lacks label licensing for its Music Beta service.

True to Google’s beta release form, the service is currently invite-only, with priority given to those attending Google I/O as well as those who own Motorola’s Xoom tablet. Registration can be found at music.google.com.

Google’s music service premiered at last year’s I/O conference. Google had announced the purchase of Simplify Media, a company that produces software that lets you stream music from your home computer to a web-connected device, such as a smartphone.

Apple is also rumored to be working on a “digital locker” music service similar to Google’s.

Amazon was the first of the three major companies to launch its music streaming service; Cloud Player debuted in March of this year. Like Google’s music service, Cloud Player lets you stream your online music library to any web browser or Android mobile device.

Amazon has recently come under fire for launching its Cloud Player services without securing licensing agreements from the four major record labels: EMI, Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group.

Google’s failure to come to an agreement with the labels results in limitations to its service. The most prevalent one: the inability to purchase music.

Amazon users, however, are able to purchase music from the company’s online MP3 store, which has licensing agreements worked out with major labels, unlike its Cloud Player services. After you buy a song from Amazon MP3, tracks are automatically uploaded to your digital music locker.