Digital Top Stories

EMI on board for Apple cloud service?

By | Published on Thursday 19 May 2011

EMI

Apple has signed an agreement with EMI for its planned ‘cloud’ service, according to C-Net, which adds that Warner Music signed a similar deal last month and talks with Sony and Universal are moving along nicely.

It is thought that Apple’s long-time-in-development cloud service will add some sort of digital locker functionality to the iTunes platform, competing with similar services recently launched by both Google and Amazon. Though, of course, neither Google nor Amazon has licences from the record companies for their locker offers (they claim they don’t need any), which would make the licensed Apple locker stand out from the pack.

That said, by going the licensed route, the Apple locker may be more limited than the other recent entrants into this market, perhaps only allowing users to store on Apple’s servers and access via any net connected device music files bought from the iTunes Store. That said, it will also likely offer extra functionality not currently delivered by Amazon and Google, for example giving users cloud access to music they have downloaded from the iTunes Store without necessitating them to upload the tracks themselves.

Insiders are now pointing to a June launch for the service some are dubbing iCloud, partly because Apple recently spent millions acquiring the iCloud.com domain.



READ MORE ABOUT: |