When Google and Amazon launched their cloud music services, they did so without signing deals with the four major music labels. Apple will not be following suit, and according to music industry insiders, having all the contracts signed is what’s going to let Cupertino kick the competition’s teeth in.
When Amazon launched Cloud Locker, they took the position that they didn’t need to sign contracts with any music publishers: all they were providing was a storage locker for users to play their own music, uploaded manually from their computer. It’s a position that Google has similarly taken, largely because their own talks with the labels to launch their own iTunes-competing music store have totally stalled.
On the other hand, Apple appears to be lining up all the proper signatures for when it launches its own music-streaming service. And those signatures are going to be a big asset to Apple.
Multiple music industry insiders are now confirming that Apple’s cloud-based offering will afford a far wider array of options to users than Amazon or Google’s service can legally provide.
What those services will actually be, we won’t know until Apple officially unveils their new baby. That’s probably going to happen next month at WWDC, but in the meantime, anyone want to hazard a guess on what Apple will be able to do with all the contracts signed that Cloud Locker and Google Music can’t? Hit us up with them in the comments!
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
28 responses to “Music Industry Insiders Say Apple Will Blow Google Music Out Of The Water”
The only real potential problem I see is AT&T (and others) now putting data transfer limits on their internet plans. If you watch a few movies/TV shows, and listen to a lot of music, will you have to pay up additional money for more usage??? Streaming might be the next big thing, but will internet providers strangle it in the beginning with higher fees for more data streaming???
now i’m really curious about what apple has in store that is so amazing.
Google Music services sound amazing, i dont know how apple will top them.
Since google has youtube, they have a huge advantage over apple’s itunes store.
They own the main portal where artists and musicians now promote their songs.
I see a service in which Apple’s entire itunes library is in the cloud, it recognizes the tracks you own without having to upload them to Apple’s servers because they are already there.
For $20 a year you can stream Apple’s entire library while also having the ability to buy an album and put a hard copy on your idevice for an additional fee (not necessarily $9.99)
Playlists will incorporate pandora like features and when you hit Genius, it doesnt just match your songs in your library but Apple’s entire library. Expect social features incorporated as well.
In other words, it will be just like Microsoft’s Zune service?
Um no, it will actually gain traction. Additionally, Apple’s library far exceeds Microsofts and the Genius/Social features will define the experience.
iTunes in the cloud. Buy and store music and videos… in the cloud. Please, Apple. Please.
Right now I’m just hoping that Apple unlike Google and Amazon won’t go US only, not sure I’ll be interested in using any of the services but still.
They have regular iTunes over here so I guess music in the cloud shouldn’t be much more of a problem.
Then again, movies and TV shows still aren’t available in iTunes and i can’t quite figure our why, doesn’t the movie and TV industries want my money? :p
Well seeing how Google music really isnt anything more than some cloud space and a player Apple won’t have to do much more, just stick a store on there (or whatever they are doing with all the deals they are making), heck just launching a finished product and in more than just the US would beat Google by quite a lot
Apple is under far more scrutiny — always — but it seems like getting the record companies to sign-off on the service is the smart thing to do.
P.S. Way to use the Windows 95 clouds, John. :P
Yes, i think all these cloud players will lead to even more piracy as people can store all their illegally downloaded music and videos to the cloud.
i argue youtube is more important to musicians right now than itunes. a lot of musicians promote themselves through youtube, and get famous from it too. itunes is no longer as important since fewer and fewer people are paying for music, it’s eventually going to way of free.
Well, Zune has 11 million, iTunes has 14 million songs… but the Zune’s Smart DJ feature combines genius-like playlists with streaming media that hasn’t been downloaded yet, so that part sounds the same. The social features sounds the same too. You’ve got achievements, friend-library sharing, artist fan pages, posting to twitter/facebook. Pretty nice! The rich artist content and advanced graphics rendering make iTunes look like an Excel file too, but that’s another story.
What will Apple deliver? It’s anyone’s guess and hard to say beyond the likely store-all-music+videos-in-the-clouds feature. And expect Apple to do it right…and, er, without Flash (moron Google).
However, here’s what I’d like:
– to get the CDs I own in the cloud without ripping them
– to do the same for my DVDs and Blu-rays as well
– not just iBooks but also other ePubs I’ve bought
How Apple could accomplish this? I really don’t know and doubt we’ll see it anytime soon – but I can hope!
I bet those same people said google wouldn’t be dominating the smartphone industry in 2011.