Reuters is reporting that Apple has now “completed work” on the much-rumored cloud-based music initiative.
Sorry for quoting at length, but they say it best:
Apple Inc has completed work on an online music storage service and is set to launch it ahead of Google Inc, whose own music efforts have stalled, according to several people familiar with both companies’ plans.
Apple’s plans will allow iTunes customers to store their songs on a remote server, and then access them from wherever they have an Internet connection, said two of these people who asked not to be named as the talks are still confidential.
The report goes on to say that Apple still hasn’t managed to get any of the major music labels onboard with the new service. Apple also hasn’t informed the labels of when they plan to launch the service either.
To keep this straight, this new service is rumored to allow customers to store their music in the cloud, and stream it to internet-connected devices. If I had to guess, Apple has had the technical part of this plan completed for some time, but have been wrestling with content (read: The big music labels) providers. You know, those kids fight everything.
Apple may end up doing what Amazon recently did. That is, move ahead with this plan, and tell the music labels they can leave if they object*. Of course, the music labels won’t leave, because music is increasingly purchased through services such as iTunes.
*Apple already did something similar, when they raised song previews on the iTunes Store from 30 seconds to 90 seconds.
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