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Apple close to signing streaming deals

By | Published on Friday 5 April 2013

Apple

According to C-Net, Apple is close to signing deals with Universal and Warner for its long rumoured streaming music service, which I’m going to stop colloquially referring to as iStream, because the pedants out there keep pointing out a service already exists using that brand.

I’d use the more mundane iRadio that some people are going with but that’s already taken too. Oh, let’s just called it iAccessToALargeCatalogueOfOnlineMusic until the actual operating name is announced.

Details of the new Apple music service are still unclear, though it has often been assumed that it would operate more to the Pandora model rather than being a fully on-demand Spotify rival, mainly because a Pandora-type service would be cheaper to licence.

Though, reports say, Apple is pushing to pay even lower royalties than Pandora, which currently licences recording rights in the US through collecting body SoundExchange. Apple’s argument, it seems, is that the streaming service would upsell downloads, which has a logic to it, though previous efforts to link streaming and download set-ups haven’t enjoyed much success.

Of course, previous efforts haven’t been attached to the largest and most popular download store, and recent pre-release streaming efforts with David Bowie and Justin Timberlake seem to have proved successful (even if that model isn’t entirely what Apple seems to be pushing for).

While the specifics of all this remain unclear, gossipers reckon the service could launch this summer, with plans to quickly roll it out into at least twelve territories, says C-Net.



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