Will Apple Announce iTunes In The Cloud June 7th?
The Apple rumor mill is gearing up yet again, with the blogosphere increasingly atwittter (pun intended) over the possibility that Steve Jobs will announce an iTunes in the cloud music service on June 7th at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
NME, The Electric Pig, Wired and many others have all weighed in despite scant evidence that a cloud music announcement is forthcoming. It is true that Apple likes to announce things at their gatherings. It's also true that lala.com is getting turned off a week prior on May 31st. Lastly, there has to be some reason that Apple bought lala in the first place, right?
I do know that Apple has been talking to the major labels about a service that would, at the very least, allow you to play tracks that you bought on iTunes from the cloud on any connected device. But, with the same "reality and the consumer be damned" attitude that has contributed to their decline, the major labels are claiming music from the cloud is an "additional use" and demanding more money before fans can play the music they've already paid for.
Sadly, I'm betting that June 7th is not the day that we'll see iTunes In The Cloud surface. I hope I'm wrong, and I believe that it will come. But the last time I checked, the heads of the major labels still had their heads (at least up to their ears) buried in the sand. – Bruce Houghton
I don’t think that’s “the sand” the label folk have their heads buried, in Bruce. An orifice, to be sure, but not in the sand…
The latest version of Rhapsody, while far from perfect, is doing a great job of scratching this itch for me. I would buy 5 or 6 albums a week if I could afford it. Now I can download and play on demand through my iPhone so iTunes has missed the boat unless they come up with a killer feature, as Apple sometimes does.
Also, iTunes in the cloud would likely have a per unit cost over the subscription model and that would keep me out as a customer.
Psonar is another worth checking out.
It’s also a cloud-based solution so you can upload the music you own so it is accessible everywhere, from any internet-connected device.
It offers unlimited storage and unlimited streaming for free.
You can also search and listen to clips of any other track uploaded to the cloud and buy that music if you like.
Psonar does more though – it also provides web-based iTunes-style management so that you can drag and drop tracks to any device, such as your iPhone, Android device or MP3 player – in fact anything that you can connect to a PC via USB. This means you can have your music on your device when that’s best, but also in the cloud – so it’s also great for backup:
http://blog.psonar.com/2010/02/26/laptop-dead-music-safe/
So – it’s perfect if you love your old MP3 player, want to keep your music on an inexpensive memory stick or for when you don’t have an internet connection and thus offers you the best of both worlds.