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Rumor: Cloud-based iTunes delayed until summer

by Mike Schramm Apr 1st 2010 at 7:30PM

Ever since Apple bought music-streaming service Lala, rumors of a cloud-based solution for iTunes have been floating around. And unfortunately, we don't have any official news on that yet (I know I'd use it -- I already share my library to all of my computers in-house anyway), but we do have more rumors. "Music industry sources" have informed CNET that there is a cloud service in the works, but that it's been delayed until the summer at least. There's no information about why, but apparently the delay came from Apple -- the company told music industry executives that the service wouldn't be ready until the third quarter of this year.

I'll wait -- having an iTunes service that could send my music library to any computer I own (or even my iPhone or iPad -- drool) would be awesome, but of course there must be lots and lots of technical and bandwidth issues to work out at least. So if you are expecting to see a cloud-based service from Apple in the future, you can at least stop frantically refreshing the iTunes page until sometime this summer.

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Ever since Apple bought music-streaming service Lala, rumors of a cloud-based solution for iTunes have been floating around. And...
 

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Canonical will launch a music store integrated with the Ubuntu One cloud sync service as part of the 10.04 LTS release on April 29. The store beta test is now open to anyone running the beta version of the Ubuntu OS ("Lucid"). Beta 1 is available for download at www.ubuntu.com. Here's more info on the Ubuntu One Music Store: http://voices.canonical.com/ubuntuone/?p=263

April 02 2010 at 3:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John.B

MobileMe works great for me. I'd hate to be without the ability to seemlessly sync appointments, contacts, etc between two Macs, an iPhone, and from a browser.

I know there were issues rolling out the updates early on, but it's been rock solid for me since then.

April 02 2010 at 9:46 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rego

@ Mike Schramm

"And unfortunately, we don't have any official news on that yet"

I agree with those who have already pointed out that if their has been no official announcement by Apple their really can't be a delay.

April 02 2010 at 3:01 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael

Already got this: simplify media.

April 02 2010 at 1:10 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Michael's comment
deluded spider

So I did a search on Simplify Media because I'd never heard of it, and it looks like as of the past month or so, they're canceling their service while they make a major upgrade or something, aren't allowing any new accounts, and it all seems very hush-hush.

Coincidence?

April 02 2010 at 5:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael

Woah! Super lame! I use it DAILY for streaming my audiobooks to my iPhone so I don't have to clutter my phone with storing them. *sad face*

I wish they had sent a notification to their users.

April 02 2010 at 6:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris Pratt

So my biggest question is: should this rumored iTunes-in-the-cloud service be true, will it only be for iTunes purchases or will your entire iTunes library work? The amount of music in my library actually purchased via iTunes is miniscule to the size of my entire library, so if it's only for iTunes purchases, it's useless to me.

April 02 2010 at 12:41 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Chris Pratt's comment
kolizz

Can't see them letting you upload any songs since those are probably directly off your closest torrent site ;). I would guess it's similar to Spotify (spotify.com). And I really hope that Spotify will survive an Apple attack, they're innovative people making a really good service.

April 03 2010 at 8:45 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Eideard

I imagine the data center in North Carolina will be up and running in time.

April 01 2010 at 10:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
_mind

already got one; it's called bittorrent.

April 01 2010 at 8:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
DavidG

How can there be a delay if there was never an announced launched date or even confirmation that a cloud-based iTunes was a definite go?

April 01 2010 at 8:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
tuaw

Wait, so 4 months ago Apple bought a smallish streaming music company, and somehow magically is going to turn it into a streaming music service for the *single largest digital music customer base in the world* by summer? And that 6-8 month timeframe includes a DELAY? My God people, do the rumormongers actually have any concept of what they're talking about?

To the analysts: just because Apple didn't ship what you guessed ship by a date you pulled out of your uninformed @$$ does not mean it's 'delayed'. Hell, as far as we know they might not even be planning such a service.

April 01 2010 at 8:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ben

the problem with delaying and Apple is

They rarely tell you when when this mystical unannounced thing is going to be released......

April 01 2010 at 7:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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