Now Apple plans to let you stream your iTunes over the web

Apple is to launch an online music service that, for the first time, will allow customers to listen to tracks streamed over the internet.

The move could pose a significant threat to existing music operations such as Spotify and We7.

According to music industry insiders, iTunes customers will be given access to a “digital locker” that will automatically store songs bought through Apple’s music store. At present, songs downloaded from iTunes can be stored only on a computer or iPod. Under the digital locker system, customers will also be able to access the tracks they have purchased by logging on to a website — expected to be called iTunes.com — where the songs could be streamed over the internet to any computer.

Spotify and We7 are fledgeling services giving access to millions of songs that can be heard over the web and paid for through monthly subscriptions or advertising.

Analysts have long expected Apple — acting before Google or Amazon — to create a system allowing people to store and access their music collections “in the cloud” on the internet. Apple prepared the way last month by announcing the closure of Lala.com, a music site that it bought for about $80 million in December. Lala’s software allows people to store personal music libraries online and play them through a web browser, alongside any tracks they subsequently purchase. This technology and Lala’s engineering team are thought to underpin Apple’s new service.

One executive at a leading record label said: “A few weeks before they bought Lala, Apple told us they wanted to create a cloud-based service.”

A chief executive at a rival online music company said he believed that the digital locker was a “stepping stone” toward Apple’s creation of a fully fledged online music service. He said that if song-streaming sites such as Spotify could prove their business models were profitable, Apple would have the infrastructure to launch a similar system quickly and squash such upstart businesses.

For the past year, Apple has been creating a huge server “farm” — the structures that house supercomputers required to run big internet services such as search engines. Costing about $1 billion (£677 million) to build, its purpose has been kept secret.

Source: The Times