APPLE TAKES IT TO THE iCLOUD

After months of speculation and having been beaten to the punch by both Amazon and Google, Apple has finally announced iCloud, their cloud music streaming platform. Unsurprisingly given both Apple’s leverage with the iTunes music store and their penchant for excellent technology, Apple’s cloud service promises to be better than the aforementioned two pretty much from the start.

Here’s what you need to know about iCloud:

• It’s essentially a re-tooled version of MobileMe that will allow email, contacts, calendars and, of course, music to be synched wirelessly and effortlessly across multiple devices (up to 10).
• Music already purchased through the iTunes music store can be re-purchased and beamed into the iCloud for no cost.
• For music not purchased through iTunes, the iTunes Match service will allow users to access their entire collection from the cloud for just $25/year with no limits on bandwidth or number of songs. The service essentially scans your iTunes library and “matches” the songs with existing iTunes Store content of 256k AAC files, meaning that in order for this to work your MP3s need to be properly labeled and encoded. We’re guessing this will work just fine for CDs you’ve ripped to your computer and will probably work for music downloaded from other services like Amazon, but as for those full discographies you’ve torrented it’s anyone’s guess.

Exciting times! iCloud is available now, although iTunes Match doesn’t start until this coming fall. While iCloud falls short of the all-inclusive streaming subscriptions we’re all waiting for, it’s a step in the right direction. We’ll get there eventually.

-VN