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.

DUKE NUKEM FOREVER DEMO COMING JUNE 3RD

If you’ve been following the Duke Nukem Forever saga for the last decade or so, you were more entertained than surprised when Gearbox delayed the launch of the game one last time in March from the original May launch dates to June 14th in the United States and June 10th internationally. If you’re still skeptical the game will ever appear at all, Gearbox has something to help you keep the faith: a demo, slated for June 3rd.

In a brand new video, Gearbox President Andy Pitchford says that the launch dates are for real this time, and the decades-long Duke Nukem Forever saga will soon come to an end. First, Gearbox will unveil a demo of the game on June 3rd that members of the First Access Club will be able to download and play to get a taste of what the full game will look and play like.

If you’re not already a member of the First Access Club, you can still become one by purchasing the Borderlands Game-of-the-Year edition, or by pre-ordering Duke Nukem Forever from select retailers around the globe. At this point, only First Access Club members will be able to play the demo. Gearbox hasn’t said whether or not they’ll make the demo available to anyone else, or make it freely available once the game is officially released.

If you want to get your hands on a demo code, you can visit the game’s official site to see a list of the select retailers you’ll have to pre-order from. In the United States, you can buy from Amazon or GameStop, in Canada you’ll have to buy from EB Canada, and in the UK you can order from GAME, Play.com, TheHut.com, or Zavvi.com. When Duke Nukem Forever is officially launched, it’ll be available for Windows, XBox 360, and PlayStation 3.

AMAZON CLOUD PLAYER STREAMS TO iOS DEVICES AFTER UPDATE

Amazon Cloud Player has been laying low following its scuffle with Sony Music, but that hasn't kept the company's developers from rolling a crucial new feature out -- support for Apple's iOS devices, which it didn't have on day one. Despite running in the Safari browser window, we've confirmed that songs will indeed play. The interface of the Cloud Player is almost the same as, if not identical to, the page that loads up on your computer browser.

The Cloud Player works flawlessly with the multitasking controls in iOS; the usual forward/pause/volume options are all usable as you play Angry Birds. Sadly, there is just one bump in the road that keeps the process from being perfectly smooth: mobile Safari prohibits you from doing drag-and-drops, which adds a couple extra steps to the process of adding songs to your playlists.

AMAZON SAYS LICENSING NOT NEEDED FOR CLOUD DRIVE

Amazon, in a letter penned to music labels, the online retail giant stated that its new Cloud Drive music service has boosted digital MP3 sales and goes on to explain why it does not need permission from record labels for its use. “There has been speculation that we are looking for licenses for Cloud Drive and Cloud Player,” reads the e-mail. “We are not looking for licenses for Cloud Drive or Cloud Player as they exist today — as no licensees are required.” Amazon continues, “Cloud Player is a media management and play-back application not unlike Windows Media Player and any number of other media management applications that let customers manage and play their music. It requires a license from content owners no more than those applications do. It really is that simple.” The company did mention that further improvements may require licensing, and that record labels can “expect to hear more” from Amazon on potential licensing “in the near future.”

David Israeite of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) called the move “troubling,” and added that Amazon was not creating “an environment of trust and cooperation.”

SONY AND AMAZON CLASH OVER CLOUD PLAYER

Amazon recently launched its free Cloud Player service, which lets you stream your music collection from the cloud to your computer or Android device. While this has no doubt put a smile on many faces (American ones only, for now), Sony Music isn't too happy about Amazon jumping the gun over licensing for streaming rights. The record label told Reuters that it's hoping Amazon "will reach a new license deal, but we're keeping all of our legal options open." In retaliation, Amazon responded with the following statement to Ars Tehcnica:

"Cloud Player is an application that lets customers manage and play their own music. It's like any number of existing media management applications. We do not need a license to make Cloud Player available. The functionality of saving MP3s to Cloud Drive is the same as if a customer were to save their music to an external hard drive or even iTunes."

Of course, the bigger story here is that Amazon's free Cloud Player is going head-to-head with Sony's Music Unlimited streaming subscription service, which was pushed out last month after plenty of money talk with various record labels. Understandably, Sony isn't willing to let Amazon cut through the red tape here without a fight, and this may also affect similar music locker services like mSpot and MP3Tunes, albeit at a much smaller scale. In fact, Sony's already expressed its discomfort with those particular companies' mode of operation, so you can probably expect to see this tension boiling over to some form of legal action before long. Now that a big shot like Amazon's involved, it's almost inevitable