MacRumors is reporting that Apple's plans for cloud-based iTunes music are in the can and ready to release to the public at any time -- but Cupertino is still hard at work hammering out terms with the four major record labels over the service. According to All Things D, Apple has commitments in hand from two of the four labels, and executive Eddy Cue will be in New York on Friday in an effort to get the others to make a deal.
You may recall that Amazon launched their own cloud initiative last month, which was mostly notable for sidestepping the music labels completely. Amazon claims that they don't need any special permission from the music labels, since they're only giving users storage space to house their music library, much in the same way a hard drive vendor would do by selling a disk.
While Amazon chose to go it alone, Apple is said to have been "very aggressive and thoughtful about it," working with the labels so everyone will be happy. It's a race against time, since Google is busy working on their cloud-based initiative for its Android platform, although Apple is expected to launch their first.
"The industry executives I've talked to haven't seen Apple's service themselves, but say they're aware of the broad strokes," the report from All Things D explains. "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."
Apple's plan to include the music labels appears to be aimed at storing a master copy of a song in the cloud, rather than forcing users to upload their entire collection. If you buy a lot of music from iTunes, that means you'll always have access to it wherever an internet connection is available -- along with the option upload your own tracks, or those purchased from competitors like Amazon MP3.
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