An Apple executive reportedly will be in New York to obtain agreements with the recording labels yet to sign-on to a cloud-based iTunes deal. Thursday, multiple reports suggested the Cupertino, Calif. company is preparing to launch a service enabling iTunes users to store and listen to songs over the Internet.
Although Amazon launched a cloud-based music locker service in March, Apple reportedly may offer a service with “better user interfaces, sound quality, and other features” with the help of the licensing pacts. Among the features could be the ability for Apple to store a single copy of a song that is then streamed to multiple users.
Apple has signed licensing agreements with two of the four lables, reports say.
The new service could appear as part of a remodeled MobileMe. A streaming service has been suggested for years, following the 2009 acquisition by Apple of music service Lala and the $1 billion purchase and construction of a North Carolina data facility.
Google also was said to have been chasing the streaming music dream, but reportedly has dropped out, preferring instead to pursue a subscription-based alternative.
[AppleInsider, All Things Digital]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
