“Hopes are high in the music sector that Apple will have all the licenses it needs to launch a cloud music service in time for the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which starts on June 6,” Greg Sandoval reports for CNET.
“Negotiations between Apple and music publishers have begun in earnest only recently but the amount of money that separates the two sides from reaching a deal is relatively small, according to two sources with knowledge of the talks,” Sandoval reports. “That said, these are cloud-licensing contracts, which are new and complex and there are still several ways Apple’s service could be delayed, insiders say.”
“Apple has wrapped up licensing agreements with three of the four top record companies, including EMI Music, Warner Music, and Sony Music. CNET reported last week that Apple and Universal Music, the largest of the major record companies, could ink a deal possibly this week. This would give Apple recorded-music rights to most of the popular music out there,” Sandoval reports. “To offer a fully functional cloud music service though, Apple still needs publishing rights.”
Sandoval reports, “The good news is that almost everybody–with the exception of Google and Amazon, which launched their own cloud music services recently–wants to see Apple’s cloud service sooner rather than later. The record companies hope that the cloud can lift sinking song sales by offering consumers the ability to store music on a third party’s servers and access it from anywhere they can connect to the Web. Music buyers won’t have to worry about clogged or malfunctioning hard drives or syncing songs to different devices.”
Full article with ways how the service could still get held up here.
OTOH, users will have to be worried about being connected in order to listen to the music they’ve paid for.
If it’s like LaLa they will offer a lower price for streaming only option but still allow you to download for something close to current prices to address the situation where you aren’t connected.
I’ve thought cloud music service was a bad idea from the start, I still do.
My thoughts as well. I guess I don’t move around or travel enough for me to be very far from my computer or iPod, that I would need access to all my music from “somewhere else”. But, I guess there must be people that need this.
If we think beyond music, this could be another selling point to the “portable background” idea where you can have all your home data on any computer at which you sit. Your music is there. Your videos are there. Your settings are the same, your data is there… The music could just be a stepping stone, as it was from iTunes to AppleTV… just a thought…