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If Apple Inc. can uniquely keep its famous logo as a shape of apple, than it shall be not be so surprising to know that their much-anticipated new music service, iCloud, is nothing but a shape of a cloud. It was first discovered at the headquarters of Apple Inc. in San Francisco, where the host company has almost reached the final phase of preparation of its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). This internationally admired week-long conference will begin this Monday. Apple Insider reported that it has seen across the building and witnessed a large banner placed in the lobby of Apple’s headquarters building. It was revealed that there were total three large logos placed on the banner, first for the upcoming Lion OS for Mac PCs, second for the latest version of its mobile OS which is iOS 5, and the last one for its new cloud-based music service iCloud. Shaping the iCloud’s logo, it was explained that the logo has a simple black outline at its silvery background. This is the first time that iCloud service is explored more than just a title name; it has been given a shape.
This Tuesday, unlike ever before, Apple made the announcement of the program line up for the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) scheduled next week. The lineup revealed that the conference will include much-anticipated cloud storage service, named iCloud, along with iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion. Further news regarding iCloud has been published by Wall Street Journal which claims that Apple’s agreements with most music labels are a success. iCloud is fundamentally going to be a digital musical locker, quite akin to its rival services like Amazon’s Cloud Player and Google Music. Whereas WSJ reports that the distinguishing feature of Apple’s service will be the benefits of getting the music labels to sign deals, as it will consequently make it easier for users to access their libraries. 
Image via CrunchBase Both rival services, Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player, currently make the users manually upload any song they want in their online locker, making the task of uploading complete music libraries a very hectic and tedious job. While Amazon still lets any songs bought from online Amazon store to be added to Cloud Player library automatically, the songs and libraries before the activation of Cloud Player account still need to be uploaded one by one. Whereas, WSJ has disclosed that Apple will, due to the signings with the music labels, allow its users to simply use the “scan and match” feature. This will let the users’ iTunes library to be scanned for all song files, and the ones recognized by the music labels will be automatically given access to from the Apple’s server. This will release the task of uploading entire libraries to the servers.
Google has faced many critical reviews by analysts regarding its new Google Music Beta service, the new cloud-based locker which released by Google at its Google I/O event few months back. The reviews are so skeptical mostly because the lack of the facility for the users to purchase online music and stream seamlessly without having to upload their own library. Hence, consequently Google is now even ready to offer unavoidable offers of large sum of money to get the required licenses. It has been reported by Bloomberg Businessweek, that Google is already prepared to give out as much as $100 million to all four major labels, without any bitter condition, to acquire the licenses. But despite even this offer, the music labels did not negotiation due to “the music industry’s concern that search results in Google and YouTube often point to pirated music.” 
Image via CrunchBaseIt was known since day one that Google was facing serious troubles while getting the green signal from music labels, but it has now been disclosed for the first time that piracy is the main reason behind it. Further it was stated that Google is now actually ‘fed up’ of trying to convince the labels, above all WMG, as it was asking Google to charge the users with an annual fee of $30 for the cloud service. Whereas, Google had intended that, and was unmoved on the matter, users should be able to check out the new service for free with at least 500 tracks stored for free at first.
The analysts of Music industry are predicting confidently that Apple will perhaps announce, or maybe even release, its expected "iCloud" music streaming service in June. However, for that to happen, it needs to strike several deals and agreements with music publishers very quickly. Music publishers actually have different set of rights than the music distribution companies, which Apple must acquire, confirms Peter Kafka of MediaMemo. Apple is rumored to have already being almost finished the process of securing deals with the music labels, after which, it has recently has begun focusing to acquire these deals with publishers. Image via CrunchBase
Not much can be said regarding the time period in which Apple will acquire these deals with the publishers, though considering its urgency with music labels, it can be expected any time. However, it is noteworthy to point out that Apple’s release of the new feature offering 90 second song previews in iTunes, was halted for several months previously as it discussed agreements and addressed concerns of same publishers. Many music industry sources are indentifying Apple’s inclination to make the announcement or release of its so-called "iCloud" service, during its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWC), starting on the 6th June in San Francisco. Kafka declared that majority of analysts expect this year’s WWC to be more software-oriented than the preceding ones, also implying that probably Apple might not even reveal its new Apple iPhone hardware.
Image via CrunchBase Apple Inc. is very near to make announcement declaring the launch of its online cloud music storage and streaming service. It has almost signed the deals with three out of four most major labels successfully and is soon expected to finish its deal with the fourth company as it signs the agreement in next several days.
Apple Inc., the widely popular company for breaking records in selling its devices like iPhone and iPad, had finished the designing of its new service few days back from today. Many analysts have predicted that Apple will perhaps win the race with its rivals, including Google Inc and Amazon.com, to launch its complete 'cloud' music service with singed agreements from the music industry. This new iTunes cloud-based service will be offering all its users to not only buy and store their songs online, but also stream these songs from where ever they have an Internet access; regardless of the device they use.
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