Evidence mounts of Apple moving iTunes to the cloud
Evidence is continuing to mount that Apple is going to set your music free to live in the cloud.
When the rumors broke last week that Apple was looking into purchasing streaming music service Lala, and it was later confirmed, suspicions immediately ran rampant that Apple was going to retool iTunes to live in the world of cloud computing. That at long last we were going to be able to play our burgeoning music collections from anywhere with an Internet connection. However, in very typical Apple fashion, not a word has been spoken officially as of yet.
Well, thankfully, the Wall Street Journal has spoken with those experts on all things Apple, the magical “people familiar with the matter.”
According to the sources, Apple is indeed exploring the possibility of moving iTunes from a download service to a cloud-based service which would remove the requirement of storing the music on your computer. If Apple retained the current Lala model, you would pay a fee (10 cents under Lala, but does anyone think Apple would go that cheap?) and then get unlimited access to the song.
This is early days for the deal, and who knows what parts, if any, of Lala will be integrated into Apple, but from sources inside the record companies, they are apparently liking the idea. There were already deals in place between Lala and the record labels, and Apple already has its own deals based on the iTunes business model, so it only makes sense that the labels would want to continue these agreements in some form. If the cloud-based iTunes is the future though, you can rest assured that there will be some major renegotiations now that the Apple brand name is attached to the project.
Of course, this is Apple we are talking about, and until Steve Jobs actually stands on a stage and announces something, it is pure speculation.
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