RUMOR: GOOGLE TO LAUNCH MP3 STORE

The New York Times is reporting that Google is about to launch a new MP3 store, as part of its ongoing foray into the music business. According to sources within the industry, the platform, not surprisingly, would be directly linked to Google Music Beta and may launch within the next few weeks -- perhaps even before Apple unveils iTunes Match, at the end of this month. It remains to be seen, however, whether Big G will be able to finalize negotiations with record labels and publishers before launching the initiative in earnest -- a potentially major hurdle, considering Google's recent track record.

As you may recall, previous negotiations over a proposed locker-type storage service ultimately broke down earlier this year, amid concerns over licensing and illegal file-sharing. As one label executive told the Times, the recording industry desperately wants to "make sure the locker doesn't become a bastion of piracy." An MP3 store, of course, isn't exactly a radical proposal, but its future will likely hinge upon Google's ability to mend relations with a sector it recently characterized as "unreasonable and unsustainable."

RUMOR: APPLE TO STREAM MOVIES USING iCLOUD

Apple's iCloud may have only just launched but according to rumors reported by the LA Times and Wall Street Journal, it's already negotiating with Hollywood to add movies to the service.

The timing is particularly curious because Apple, along with Disney, is one of the notable holdouts from the movie studio-backed Ultraviolet scheme, which launches the first two movies on Friday. However, according to "people familiar with the matter" it could allow Ultraviolet access on iDevices via an app, while also bringing its usual media lock-in magic by also throwing in streaming copies of any flicks purchased on iTunes, but only on its own hardware. Recently activated streaming of purchased TV shows to the Apple TV shows the cloud's potential, but we'll have to wait for deals to be signed before that North Carolina datacenter puts Hollywood's best on its to-do list.

APPLE RELEASES iTUNES MATCH BETA FOR DEVELOPERS

Apple released a developer beta of the iTunes Match system this evening. The system is described by Apple as follows:

iTunes Match stores your complete music library in iCloud, allowing you to enjoy your collection anywhere, anytime, on any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or computer.

For the $25 yearly fee, iTunes Match will scan your existing iTunes music library and allow you to access it from any of your iTunes-linked Macs or iOS devices. Songs that already exist in Apple's iTunes music store will be streamed straight from Apple's master copy (at 256kbps bitrate) without a need to upload the songs yourself. Songs that don't exist in iTunes will be uploaded to iCloud. Either way, all your music (up to 25,000 songs) will be accessible from your various computers and iOS devices.

What wasn't clear before is the fact that music can be either streamed or downloaded locally to any of your computers or devices. While the video only shows the service on a Mac, we've confirmed it works the same way on iOS devices. So, essentially, you will have instant access to your entire music library from all of your Macs, iPhones, iPads, or iPod touches for only $25/year. This ability on your iOS devices means your music library won't need to take up valuable space on the device itself, as long as you have some sort of internet connection.

iTunes Match is expected to launch alongside iOS 5 this fall

APPLE STOPS RENTING TV SHOWS THROUGH iTUNES, POSSIBLE NEW VIDEO SERVICE COMING

Apple has pulled the plug on TV episode rentals via iTunes, abruptly leaving customers with only the option of purchasing per episode -- good thing you can watch those on your Apple TV streamed from the cloud -- or a Season Pass where available. AllThingsD has a quote from spokesman Tom Neumayr indicating this was in response to customers that "overwhelmingly prefer buying TV shows." Making the timing of the move particularly curious are once-again renewed rumors of an Apple HDTV and a WSJ profile of new CEO Tim Cook that indicates the company is "working on new technology to deliver video to televisions, and has been discussing whether to try to launch a subscription TV service." Like Google, any move depends on its success in negotiating a new delivery model from the networks, who so far have been averse to anything that threatens their existing relationship with pay-TV providers.

WALMART PULLS PLUG ON ONLINE MUSIC STORE

According to Digital Music News, Walmart's MP3 store will shut its digital doors forever on August 28th.

Walmart's music store was seen as an "iTunes killer" at one time. By deeply discounting MP3s to only $0.88 Walmart hoped to dethrone the Apple king. However, Walmart, even with the discounts, could not overcome the power of the idevice's tight integration with iTunes.

A representative of Wal-Mart noted that older, protected files will still be supported. "We’ve made a business decision to no longer offer MP3 digital tracks as of August 29, 2011," the executive confirmed. In late 2008, the company finally secured licenses to shift away from DRM-protected purchased and towards MP3s. "We'll continue to provide support to our customers who previously purchased digital music through Walmart Music Downloads so they may continue to enjoy and manage their existing WMA files."

RUMOR: RIM CREATING APPLE TV COMPETITOR

Research In Motion is currently working on a media box codenamed “BlackBerry Cyclone” that will launch later this fall, BlackBerry news site NerdBerry.net reports. The rumored media hub is said to be similar to Apple’s iOS-based Apple TV box, which connects to a television and plays streaming video content from iTunes. The BlackBerry Cyclone’s purported capabilities include Netflix streaming, YouTube streaming and streaming from media devices connected to the same Wi-Fi network. The unit will also reportedly feature an HDMI-out port.

The move would be a peculiar one from RIM, as it does not have an iTunes competitor to speak of and even with the extremely popular multimedia market, the Apple TV has not been an overly successful device for Apple. The Cupertino-based company announced the million-unit milestone for its refreshed Apple TV late last year, but we haven’t heard much about it since that time. RIM is also in the midst of prepping its first QNX-powered smartphone for release in 2012, not to mention seven BlackBerry handsets due to launch later this year,

LEAK: APPLE BACK-TO-SCHOOL SALE STARTS TODAY, JUNE 16

Rumors for Apple’s back-to-school deal have been floating around since before WWDC 2011, and now new evidence seems to confirm that the promotion will kick off TODAY.

MacRumors was able to get a photo of Apple’s marketing material for the promotion indicating that the sale would start June 16 and run through September 20. Also, instead of the rumored $200 off an iPad with the purchase of a Mac, the offer is for a $100 Mac App Store gift card that can also be used for purchases from the iTunes Store. In previous years, a free iPod was offered instead.

This new offer makes a lot of sense considering all the updates coming with Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5, and the iCloud. The Mac App Store will be built-in to Lion, and the iCloud will make it super easy to sync apps and music purchased through iTunes.

SPOTIFY SIGNS UMG, ONLY NEEDS WARNER FOR US LAUNCH

All Things D reports that Spotify has signed Universal Music Group to a US distribution deal, the third of the four largest labels to agree, and anonymous sources say the last remaining holdout, Warner Music, may also soon cave.

APPLE INTRODUCES iCLOUD, REPLACING MOBILEME

Apple today introduced iCloud, a breakthrough set of free new cloud services that work seamlessly with applications on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and automatically and wirelessly push it to all your devices. When anything changes on one of your devices, all of your devices are wirelessly updated almost instantly.

“Today it is a real hassle and very frustrating to keep all your information and content up-to-date across all your devices,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iCloud keeps your important information and content up to date across all your devices. All of this happens automatically and wirelessly, and because it’s integrated into our apps you don’t even need to think about it—it all just works.”

The free iCloud services include:

The former MobileMe® services—Contacts, Calendar and Mail—all completely re-architected and rewritten to work seamlessly with iCloud. Users can share calendars with friends and family, and the ad-free push Mail account is hosted at me.com. Your inbox and mailboxes are kept up-to-date across all your iOS devices and computers.

The App Store™ and iBookstore℠ now download purchased iOS apps and books to all your devices, not just the device they were purchased on. In addition, the App Store and iBookstore now let you see your purchase history, and simply tapping the iCloud icon will download any apps and books to any iOS device (up to 10 devices) at no additional cost.

iCloud Backup automatically and securely backs up your iOS devices to iCloud daily over Wi-Fi when you charge your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Backed up content includes purchased music, apps and books, Camera Roll (photos and videos), device settings and app data. If you replace your iOS device, just enter your Apple ID and password during setup and iCloud restores your new device.

iCloud Storage seamlessly stores all documents created using iCloud Storage APIs, and automatically pushes them to all your devices. When you change a document on any device, iCloud automatically pushes the changes to all your devices. Apple’s Pages®, Numbers® and Keynote® apps already take advantage of iCloud Storage. Users get up to 5GB of free storage for their mail, documents and backup—which is more amazing since the storage for music, apps and books purchased from Apple, and the storage required by Photo Stream doesn’t count towards this 5GB total. Users will be able to buy even more storage, with details announced when iCloud ships this fall.

iCloud’s innovative Photo Stream service automatically uploads the photos you take or import on any of your devices and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices and computers. So you can use your iPhone to take a dozen photos of your friends during the afternoon baseball game, and they will be ready to share with the entire group on your iPad (or even Apple TV®) when you return home. Photo Stream is built into the photo apps on all iOS devices, iPhoto® on Macs, and saved to the Pictures folder on a PC. To save space, the last 1,000 photos are stored on each device so they can be viewed or moved to an album to save forever. Macs and PCs will store all photos from the Photo Stream, since they have more storage. iCloud will store each photo in the cloud for 30 days, which is plenty of time to connect your devices to iCloud and automatically download the latest photos from Photo Stream via Wi-Fi.

iTunes® in the Cloud lets you download your previously purchased iTunes music to all your iOS devices at no additional cost, and new music purchases can be downloaded automatically to all your devices. In addition, music not purchased from iTunes can gain the same benefits by using iTunes Match, a service that replaces your music with a 256 kbps AAC DRM-free version if we can match it to the over 18 million songs in the iTunes Store®, it makes the matched music available in minutes (instead of weeks to upload your entire music library), and uploads only the small percentage of unmatched music. iTunes Match will be available this fall for a $24.99 annual fee. Apple today is releasing a free beta version of iTunes in the Cloud, without iTunes Match, for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users running iOS 4.3. iTunes in the Cloud will support all iPhones that iOS 5 supports this fall.

Apple is ready to ramp iCloud in its three data centers, including the third recently completed in Maiden, NC. Apple has invested over $500 million in its Maiden data center to support the expected customer demand for the free iCloud services.

Pricing & Availability
The iCloud beta and Cloud Storage APIs are available immediately to iOS and Mac Developer Program members at developer.apple.com. iCloud will be available this fall concurrent with iOS 5. Users can sign up for iCloud for free on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5 or a Mac running Mac OS® X Lion with a valid Apple ID. iCloud includes 5GB of free cloud storage for Mail, Document Storage and Backup. Purchased music, apps, books and Photo Stream do not count against the storage limit. iTunes Match will be available for $24.99 per year (US only).

APPLE TO CHARGE $25 PER YEAR FOR iCLOUD

Apple will offer paying iTunes customers a free introductory offer that makes its new iCloud service free for a limited time, Los Angeles Times reports. Apple will then begin charging about $25 per year for the service, the report claims, and it will also serve advertisements to iCloud users.

Apple is said to have signed deals with each of the four major U.S. music labels as well as some larger music publishers, which will reportedly allow the company to store music on cloud servers and stream songs to customers who have purchased them previously.

Apple announced earlier this week that it will unveil iCloud alongside iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion next week during its WWDC keynote on Monday, June 6th.

APPLE'S iCLOUD MUSIC SERVICE WILL MIRROR YOUR iTUNES LIBRARY

There's been so much chatter about Apple iCloud that you'd think the streaming music service had already been announced and the deals inked. But it's still just a rumor until an Apple executive takes the stage and unleashes the Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music competitor in a spate of superlatives. That hasn't stopped Businessweekfrom stepping up with a good summary of all that is "known" thus far, while giving us some insight into the particulars of how the service will work and the motivations to make it happen. One revelation, sourced from three people in the know, claims that Apple will scan customers' iTunes libraries (hello, LaLa) and quickly mirror the contents on Apple's own servers -- no massive DSL-choking upload required. And Apple will do you the solid of "replacing" any low bitrate tracks with the "high-quality" versions it stores in its fully licensed music locker for streaming to your connected devices.

APPLE'S APP STORE HITS 500,000 APPS

According to new data from Chop, 148apps, and Chillingo, Apple’s iTunes App Store has approved more than 500,00 applications. In an infographic posted on Facebook, the group notes that Apple has worked with 85,569 different developers and that the average price of a paid application is $3.64. Similarly, 37% of all applications are free. The most popular iTunes categories (ranked by downloads), are games (15%), books (14%), entertainment (11%), education (8%), lifestyle (7%), and utilities (6%). If it seems like Angry Birds has been a hit for nearly a year, that’s because it spent 275 days in the No. 1 spot. Apple has yet to confirm these figures and App Shopper, another third-party that monitors the App Store, currently says there are about 499,200 live applications in the store.

APPLE STRIKES DEAL WITH SONY MUSIC; CLOUD SERVICE ON ITS WAY

Apple has now reportedly signed three of four major U.S. record labels as it prepares to launch a new cloud-based streaming music service in the near future. According to Bloomberg, Apple has inked a deal with Sony that will allow the label’s massive catalog to be used alongside a forthcoming streaming product Apple will likely unveil next month. The news comes just one day after Apple is said to have finalized a similar deal with EMI.

Google recently unveiled its Music Beta by Google service and before that, Amazon launched its Cloud Drive and Cloud Player products. Neither service is accompanied by deals with record labels, however, so their utility is reduced to providing users with a means to upload music they have purchased elsewhere and then stream it to a variety of devices.

With the support of major labels, Apple will be able to introduce a paid service with a great deal of added functionality. “Streaming iTunes” has been rumored to be in development for years, and it looks like Apple is finally ready to make it a reality.

RUMOR: iOS 5 TO BE OVER THE AIR UPDATE, AT LEAST FOR VERIZON CUSTOMERS

9to5Mac has multiple sources informing it that Apple and Verizon are scheming to start delivering iOS updates over the air from this fall, or just as soon as iOS 5 is made available. Untethered OS updates are a familiar feature to users of other smartphone operating systems and even the iOS-infused Apple TV, but getting Apple's mobile devices up to date has so far always required going through the company's own cable and software.

There's no reason to believe this wireless update feature will be limited to Verizon, mind you -- that's just where the informants are coming from in this instance -- though Apple will almost certainly have to alter the file sizes of its updates. We can't think of many carriers who'll be happy to push more than half a gigabyte of data per user per update. Additionally, since iTunes currently acts as the major backup hub, 9to5Macspeculates Cupertino must be working on a cloud backup service as well, which would seem a very sensible idea.

SPOTIFY LAUNCHES iTUNES COMPETITOR

Companies like Apple and Google are doing their best to put together music products that compete directly with Spotify’s Web-based music streaming product. While reports suggest record labels are making the process as difficult as possible for these giants, Spotify just took the fight to their home turf. The company on Wednesday launched a new music download service that attempts to make Spotify “the only music player you’ll ever need.”

Spotify users can now purchase and download full playlists comprised of any songs from the company’s 9 million-track catalog for as low as £0.50 per song. And as an extra little slap, Spotify’s new feature allows playlists to be synchronized with the iPod classic, iPod nano or iPod shuffle right from within the Spotify desktop app.

Spotify still isn’t available in the U.S., but rumors suggest the company is closer than ever to striking deals with record companies that will allow it to launch its popular service stateside.

RUMOR: YOUTUBE READY TO START RENTING ON-DEMAND MOVIES

According to entertainment website The Wrap, Google's YouTube has finally locked up all the studio deals to get itself fully into the online movie rental game. The report indicates it could launch as soon as this week with movies from majors including Sony, Warner and Universal, as well as smaller entities like Lionsgate, Kino Lorber and other independents. This doesn't appear to be a challenge to (now bigger than Comcast, but still smaller than HBO) Netflix, with the unnamed studio exec quoted in the article saying how happy they are to see a new entrant renting (and eventually selling) movies that's not using a subscription model. Apple currently leads the online VOD market after jumping in with iTunes back in 2008, so obviously that's a main target but without the important info (pricing, picture quality and content) it's hard to tell how much of a challenger this is. VOD rumors have swirled around YouTube for quite some time and it rolled out $3.99 rentals of indie movies a little over a year ago, here's hoping they go the whole way and offer nothing less than 3D and 4K streaming to start.

APPLE SIGNS WARNER MUSIC TO STREAMING SERVICE

Need another sign that iTunes will soon be floating your library up to the cloud? Look no further than confirmation of Apple signing Warner Music, a deal that should see the label's music available in its upcoming streaming iTunes service. This is in addition to last week's confirmation that two major labels signed on, though its unclear whether Warner is part of the pair or is, indeed, a third. That might leave only one of the major labels left unsigned -- or maybe Apple's already locked down all four but doesn't want to kiss and tell.

APPLE MUSIC CLOUD SERVICE READY; AWAITING BLESSING OF MUSIC PUBLISHERS

According to Peter Kafka over at All Things D, Apple’s presumed cloud-based music service will not be all that dissimilar from Amazon’s. The report details that Apple, like Amazon, will allow iTunes users to store newly purchased tracks and already-owned digital music in an online locker. Unlike Amazon, however, the Cupertino company is looking for deals with major record labels.“They’ve been very aggressive and thoughtful about it,” said an industry executive speaking with Kafka. “It feels like they want to go pretty soon.” The report also notes that the industry buy-in and licensing will allow Apple to store a single, master copy of a digital music file on its services and share that file with authorized users — making the company’s storage schema much more streamlined. Amazon’s Cloud Drive implementation is based on its S3 storage service and functions more like a cloud-based hard drive — every time a user buys a track it’s uploaded to that specific users online locker. “Sources tell me that Apple has already procured deals from at least two of the big four labels (Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony and EMI) within the last two months,” writes Kafka. “One source tells me Apple content boss Eddy Cue will be in New York tomorrow to try to finalize remaining deals.”

APPLE UPDATES iTUNES; iDEVICES REJOICE

Apple has updated iTunes to version 10.2.2, which should fix several errors that have caused iPads to lock up during sync. The update also applies stability and performance improvements and fixes a bug that has caused iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch units to sync for longer than is necessary. Apple also said iTunes 10.2.2 will fix skipping issues that occur during video previews in the iTunes Store. Users should be prompted to install the latest version of iTunes upon program launch.

APPLE HIRES MICROSOFT DATA CENTER GURU; iTUNES IN THE CLOUD?

Apple has hired Kevin Timmons away from Microsoft, where he was general manager of Microsoft’s data centers. Not only that, but Timmons apparently was directly responsible for rolling out Microsoft’s cloud and data presence at 50% of the cost estimated by other managers, while maintaining peak efficiency.

Last year, Apple’s Steve Jobs dismissed Cupertino’s ambitions to bring iTunes to the cloud, saying that they still thought that downloads and not streaming were the cornerstone of digital media.

Even at the time, everyone knew he was being disingenuous: Apple had recently built a massive North Carolina data center for unknown purposes, and services like Netflix and Spotify have amply proven that a la carte streaming is what consumers actually want.

Still, Apple’s total hegemony over the music industry is based off the concept of downloads; take away the idea that users need to pay a buck to download an MP3, and Apple’s iTunes empire falls.

What Jobs was doing was attempting to buy some more time. Apple will bring iTunes to the cloud, but it needs to do so while retaining the core iTunes business, which is downloads. This means cloud locker storage, such as Amazon just introduced with Cloud Locker… and if rumors are anything to go by, we’ll see Apple roll out just that sort of product in the next few months.

But maybe Apple has something even bigger up its sleeve? The evidence is certainly mounting that Apple intends to make a massive cloud-based push that is far, far bigger than just a cloud-based music locker.

Rumor has it that Apple’s North Carolina data center isn’t the only data center Apple is setting up. In fact, rumors are circulating that Apple is setting up data centers both nationally and abroad. If these are true, Timmons’ hire likely represents a huge push into the cloud on Apple’s part… and if history is anything to go by, the repercussions of that will likely be market shaking.