Rumor: iTunes Cloud Ideal May Evaporate Into Thin Air?
by Joe White
August 27, 2010
If you were hoping next week's Special Event was finally going to herald the announcement of a cloud-based iTunes service, then you might want to let out that held breath.
According to a recent article by All Things Digital, an iTunes update will be announced next Wednesday - yet the upcoming version will simply be an online version of the store, with increased attention giving to the social aspect of music-loving.
As many of you will already know, the current web-based version of iTunes (if you can even call it that) is ridiculously unusable. Indeed, it simply serves as the middle man - opening the desktop version of iTunes as soon as possible. A true web-version would be useful: users would be able to browse through music and apps without having to have access to the program itself.
Personally, I'm expecting iTunes Cloud to come along at some point (or at least some variation on the theme). Apple's not-so-recent acquisition of Lala.com certainly seems to point towards the launch of a similar Apple-branded service. Yet, whether this service launches next week or next year is still obviously a matter of great debate.
What I find most interesting about AllThingsD's report is the speculation that Apple will be leaning towards various social networks in their upcoming version of iTunes:
If Apple makes it easier for services like Twitter and Facebook to link into the store, and share recommendations, playlists and the like, then you can imagine some pretty interesting possibilities.Over here in the UK, the music streaming service, Spotify, allows users to interact with one another through playlist-sharing. A similar feature in iTunes would undoubtably be useful - I for one love the idea of interactive playlists. I guess we're going to be left wondering about the future of iTunes Cloud until next Wednesday comes around, and the truth is unveiled. So make sure to head back to find out all the most important announcements as they're made!
