Is iTunes Floating Towards the Cloud?

The buzz in the music world today is that Apple has tied up the necessary agreements to launch a cloud music service. As usual, Apple is being tight-lipped but it could be that iTunes will become a cloud-based service, which would be a big blow to the hopes of Amazon and Google.

Bloomberg News reports today that Apple is finalizing negotiations with Universal. It had already struck deals with Warner, EMI and Sony, allowing it to distribute the company's music via the cloud.

Amazon and Google, as well as lots of smaller players, are already offering cloud services, but you have to bring your own music. Depending on the size of your library and your Internet speed, it could take days to upload everything.

Then there are those of us who have lost track of which hard drive holds our iTunes library.

Depending on how Apple structures it, current iTunes customers might be able to unlock their libraries and listen to all their previously purchased tunes online.

Whether this is what Apple ends up doing is, of course, anybody's guess right now. It could be that the music cloud will be part of a broader overhaul of Apple's MobileMe platform that lets users store their pictures, contacts and other files on Apple's cloud and access them from anywhere.