Apple’s reportedly on the cusp of getting all the major music labels signed for their upcoming cloud-based music locker service… but don’t expect it to be free. According to rumblings from industry sources, Apple is planning on charging for their cloud-streaming service.
Says CNet:
Don’t expect Apple’s cloud-music service to come free of charge, at least not forever.
Apple plans to eventually charge for its cloud music service, sources told CNET. Users would be able to store their digital media on the company’s servers.
Music industry insiders told me that Apple has indicated it could offer the service free of charge initially but that company will eventually require a fee. Google is also expected to charge for a similar service
Amazon’s Cloud Drive gives all users 5GB of cloud storage space for free, which upgrades automatically to 20GB of space with any MP3 album purchase. From there, it’s a buck per gig per year for larger storage plans.
I imagine that Apple will stick to similar fees. Previous rumors pegged Apple’s cloud storage fee at $20 per year, and that seems reasonable: it’s what Amazon would charge for 20GB of Cloud Drive space if not for the current “free album” promotion. I just wonder if Apple will roll out a free version of its cloud-storage plan, a la Amazon’s 5GB option, or if it’ll all be baked into a revamped MobileMe trial.
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.
18 responses to “Report: Apple To Charge For Its iTunes Cloud Locker Service”
Unfortunately with 3TB of library- I can’t imagine being a customer of this service;
Have to form my own cloud right here on Tera-Byte firma…
ken
If Apple thinks it can get away with charging their infamous Apple tax on cloud services they’re in for, as Jobsy would say, a bag full of hurt. I’ll stick to my 5 GB of free storage now turned to 20 GB’s of free storage. Oh yeah and did I fail to mention all my Mp3 purchases don’t count against my storage limit. Wake up Apple or you’re gonna miss the boat and wind up sitting on the pier playing cards with Microcrap.
Wow. Imagine that! Apple having the balls to charge for a service! I should be able to have unlimited storage and bandwidth for free – just because I’m an Apple user.
LOL!!!
Maybe Apple will provide 2GB for free, just like Dropbox, and then charge after that?
I don’t get this cloud service gimmick anyway. I can store my own files thank you.
Having a 120gb ipod classic full of music, it seems quite unuseful a service like this for me.
I don’t think Apple does anything for free… I still like them though!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
the best
One thing a cloud service is able to do, is avoid duplication of files on computers. In fact, they could avoid duplication on the cloud servers as well, and rather use tagging, that ties it to the user. So your locker will have tags to the master file, with on-demand streaming. Therefore, a user would not need oodles of cloud space, as it’s all virtual. And therefore, Apple should not charge for this…
I bet it will be more like Rdio…
Wait. They’re charging for a service that doesn’t even exist yet? Wow. No wonder they make so much money!