Insiders: Apple’s iCloud Will The First Step Towards Making $0.99 Downloads Archaic

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itunes-cloud-service

Good things come to those who wait. While Google and Amazon rushed to offer simple cloud storage services, Apple apparently was working on something bigger. Much bigger. Get ready for iCloud, a full-featured service streaming your iTunes collection to your iPhone, iPad – eventually even your car.


“Apple will be able to scan customers’ digital music libraries in iTunes and quickly mirror their collections on its own servers,” reports BusinessWeek after talking with three insiders. Additionally, if your songs’ quality isn’t up to snuf, Apple will provide a higher-quality version for streaming.

What do the music labels and publishers get for agreeing to Apple’s plan? A Netflix-like future. As the DVD-by-mail service found great success in converting to video streaming, the ailing music industry will have new revenue from monthly subscriptions and new ties to cable providers, according to the report.

“We will come to a point in the not-so-distant future when we’ll look back on the 99-cent download as anachronistic as cassette tapes and 8-tracks,” predicts Ross Crupnick, music analyst with retail forecaster NPD Group. Crupnick is right, of course. Like the iPad breathed new life into the tablet computer, iCloud will euthanize the tired digital music landscape, replacing it with a future wide with possibilities.

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