We will never forget whatever Apple’s announcing tomorrow, according to the teaser text on the company’s website. “Ah, November 16th. The day Apple launched iTunes for the web,” we might say in the year 2056. That’s not to say that Apple’s launching iTunes for the web, but a web-based version of iTunes would certainly be a relatively big announcement.
It could be a more mundane announcement, such as unlimited iTunes music downloads for a fixed monthly price. Rumors that Apple’s been pursuing such features have been floating around for a bit, but competitors have been offering unlimited music downloads for years now.
(More on Techland: Apple Considering Monthly Fees for Unlimited iTunes Music?)
But Apple may finally be making good use of its Lala acquisition. Lala was a cloud-based music service that functioned similarly to iTunes but lived entirely on the web.
So imagine instead of downloading iTunes on your computer, you’d open it up in a website. All your previously-purchased songs and videos would be there and you’d hopefully be able to upload and synchronize media from your hard drive that you’d gathered from other places.
The killer use would be to open up iTunes on your iPhone or iPad and have access to all of your music and videos in the same way. As long as you have an internet connection, you’d be able to stream anything.
If you’re without a connection, you’d hopefully be able to transfer songs to your device’s storage similarly to how you currently transfer music to your iPhone, except that you wouldn’t have to connect it to your computer first.
It’d be a direct transfer. Just like you can buy and download music directly on your iPhone and iPad now, you’d be able to download tracks from your own collection as well.
(More on Techland: Google Music Rumors: Labels Happy About iTunes Alternative?)
With Google’s rumored music service apparently just around the corner, Apple would be wise to make a big push for the cloud. Google rarely creates downloadable software, so its music service would almost certainly be a cloud-based, web-only affair. Apple’s already betting big on streaming-only, rental content with Apple TV. Perhaps it’s about to try the same with music, albeit with both download-to-own and monthly subscription options instead.
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