The deals, which are reported to be signed off next week, will join one already standing between Apple and Warner Music Group to allow users to access the respective music libraries via stream from the cloud. It’s a move Apple has been taking its time with; Google and Amazon are already offering services that allow users to upload music to a cloud server for listening on the go.
This extra thinking time may pay off for Apple, though. For one thing, Apple’s competitors in this field don’t have contracts with the aforementioned record companies, meaning that users have to laboriously upload their existing music files to the cloud manually. Apple, on the other hand, could offer a ‘scan and match’ service, which would allow iTunes to quickly look at a user’s library, before finding the online equivalents for them.
The record companies will certainly be hoping that Apple’s service is the more polished and successful, as it may lead to Google making a return to their offices to ask for similar deals. Will the Cloud offering from iTunes best the others? Let us know your thoughts on the Gadget Helpline Twitter feed.