Word has been going around that Apple’s rumored streaming music service will be able to scan users’ iTunes libraries, mirroring them in the cloud – but at a price, of course. Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that folks who have been briefed on talks between Apple and the music labels know that Apple has obtained new licenses for its iCloud service, where they have the permission to mirror individual iTunes music collections on its servers. Not only that, Apple will go the extra mile and replace low-quality music files stored on users’ hard drives with higher-quality versions that are available on its servers, how’s that for a bonus?
This convenience won’t be free though, and label executives are already negotiating aggressively for profits in the cloud. There are no further specific details on the pricing structure, but Stone and Fixmer do speculate that Apple could bundle streaming music services into its MobileMe revamp that currently costs a dollar shy of a hundred bucks annually. Would you pay more money for this kind of convenience? The prospect of getting higher quality versions does sound good, we admit.