Good news for anyone who owns CDs — Amazon is now selling music on a two-for-one basis that gives every customer a digital and a physical version of an album. The company just raised the stakes in its fight with Google and Apple over “music lockers.” Read more at paidContent »
Apple officially launched iTunes Match on Monday. I managed to sign up, and take the service for a test ride using a small iTunes library to see how it would handle iTunes purchases, ripped tracks and anything else I could think to throw at it. Read more »
On Monday, Apple made iTunes Match available to any U.S. iTunes account holder for $24.99 per year. On the surface, having your entire iTunes library stored in and accessible from the cloud is great, but getting from Match subscription to usable library isn’t exactly easy. Read more »
Apple announced at its iPhone 4S event that iTunes Match would launch by “late October,” but that self-imposed deadline has come and gone, and consumers have yet to gain access to the service. The cloud music storage service has been available to developers since August. Read more »
Amazon’s online music storage and streaming service sounds great on Android devices or a desktop browser. Apple devices have been left in the cold until now however: here’s a first look at Amazon’s Cloud Player for the iPad’s browser, which despite a few shortcomings, shows promise. Read more »
iTunes Match, and its ability to deliver high-quality DRM-free versions of music in your library to all your iOS, Mac and PC devices via iCloud seems like a reward for music piracy. But it might also be a way of getting back what once was lost. Read more »
Rumors have been flying that Apple is deep in negotiations with record labels and publishers to secure the rights necessary to provide a cloud-based music service. But why does Apple need to negotiate anything? Here’s a basic guide to the murky waters of music licensing. Read more »
Apple made it official early Tuesday morning: We’ll see details about three exciting new software products at WWDC 2011 next week. OS X Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud will all be included in the Monday keynote. But what, specifically, can we expect to see announced? Read more »
Apple is very close indeed to locking up every major music label in advance of launching its own cloud music service, according to Bloomberg. Sony Music is reportedly on board, leaving just Universal Music Group to join up before a service can be unveiled. Read more »
Apple users eager to see what the company has in store for cloud music may not have to wait long to find out, as Cupertino is said to have closed a cloud music licensing deal with EMI, according to Cnet, with other labels nearly on board. Read more »
Google announced its new cloud music service Wednesday, and Amazon revealed its own Cloud Player in late March. At this point, Apple is really the last major player to make its move. But judging by the offerings so far, that might work to Apple’s advantage. Read more »
