A pair of reports today put the spotlight on Apple's plans to unveil a cloud-based music locker. Reuters initially reported that Apple had "completed work" on the long-rumoured cloud-based music service and is said to beating Google to the punch.
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.
Reuter's report does mention that Apple is yet to sign any new licenses for the service and major labels are looking to have these signed before the service launches. According to the three sources Apple has not informed music labels when it intends to launch the new service.
In separate report from All Things D the sources contradict those from Reuters saying that Apple has come to terms with two of the four major music labels and that Eddy Cue, Apple vice president of iTunes is meeting labels to try and finalise deals this week.
The report from All Things D also briefly noted how the service will work:
The idea is that Apple will let users store songs they’ve purchased from its iTunes store, as well as others songs stored on their hard drives, and listen to them on multiple devices.