Google has been negotiating to launch a music service for some time, and apparently struck licensing agreements with all three major labels just in time for its developer conference, which will be held in San Francisco this week. That means the company beat Apple to the punch; Apple has reportedly been in negotiations to launch a Pandora-like radio service.

Google will have to compete with a growing number of subscription music services, which include market leader Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody, Muve Music and the yet-to-be-launched Beats music subscription service. However, Google would be the first company to combine a music locker for cloud-hosted personal music collections with a subscription offering.

Check out all the details of the announcement, as well as everything else Google is going to unveil, by following our Google I/O coverage, including a live blog of the keynote starting at 9am PT Wednesday.

The case is the latest in series of copyright lawsuits in which photographers have accused artists like Shepard Fairey and Mr. Brainwash of appropriating their photos without permission. The most famous of these involved Fairey’s Obama “Hope” poster which was based on an AP photograph.

As can be seen in pictures in the court filing below, Mr. Brainwash drew on photos of the late James Marshall to create images like this one of Coltrane:

The suit says Mr. Brainwash, whose real name is Thierry Guetta, sold the images as merchandise. It also says Google wrongfully used the images as backdrops at its Google Music launch party which took place at Guetta’s studio in Los Angeles. (Here is Mashable’s account of the hype and here are an LA radio station’s pictures of the event).

Guetta lost a similar lawsuit last summer over his recreation of a famous Run DMC photo.

The artistic provenance of Guetta himself is in question, and has given rise to a hipper-than-thou debate about whether he is the alter-ego of famed street artist Banksy. Both characters were the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary, Exit through the Gift Shop.

As for Google, its music service which was launched as a rival to iTunes, has reportedly struggled to get traction. The company has since folded Google Music into its multi-media site Google Play.

The lawsuit seeks damages and an injunction forbidding the use of the images. Previous such lawsuits have turned on whether the new images are transformative enough to count as fair use in copyright law.

You can see more of the pictures in question here in the lawsuit:

Mr. Brainwash Lawsuit

The new service was unveiled in Los Angeles (the event is still in progress here) by Jamie Rosenberg, director for digital content on Android, and other Google executives. It’s clearly a take on what Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has been doing with iTunes and iCloud this year, and represents a step forward for the Music Beta service by allowing users to actually acquire new songs. Thirteen million songs will be available for purchase, but the service will be U.S.-only upon its debut.

EMI, Universal, and Sony (NYSE: SNE) are official partners for Google Music, the company announced, as well as dozens of other smaller independent labels. That leaves Warner as the only holdout among the big four record companies.

Record companies appear to have the ability to set their own prices to a certain extent, as tracks are available in the store for $0.69, $0.99, and $1.29. It’s not clear what bitrates Google is offering for the tracks.

The company will offer exclusive tracks from The Rolling Stones, Coldplay, and Busta Rhymes as part of the new service in an attempt to jump-start demand. Google also hopes that people will share their music purchases through its Google+ social-networking service, allowing friends on Google+ to play the track once for free.

Google will continue to allow people to upload music they have already purchased to Google’s servers. Unlike Apple’s iTunes Match, you’ll have to sit there and watch the slow upload process of those files, but unlike iTunes Match, it won’t cost you anything.

The company also wants to turn Google Music into a tool for smaller bands to promote themselves and their music with a feature called Artist Hub. Bands can set up an artist page for $25, where they can post a biography, pictures, links, and actually sell their songs through Google Music. Google will take a 30 percent cut of those sales.

T-Mobile got a special place in the Google Music event, the one remaining major carrier in the U.S. that isn’t selling Apple’s iPhone. Its customers will be able to pay for songs purchased through Google Music on their monthly phone bills.