NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc. is close to launching an online music storage and streaming service after having reached deals with three of the four major labels and is expected to wrap up the fourth in a few days, according to several people familiar plans.
The manufacturer of the iPhone and iPad completed work on the new service, according to two people and will beat Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. in the bid to launch a global music service "cloud". The iTunes cloud service will offer users the opportunity to buy, store and stream albums and favorite songs everywhere where they have an Internet connection on any device.
Warner Music Group Corp. was the first to arrive at an agreement of clouds with Apple more than two weeks ago and was followed by the Group of the EMI and Sony Music Entertainment from Sony Corp. more recently, according to three people with knowledge of the talks. Universal Music Group of SA Vivendi, the largest company of music in the world, is "in the days of putting pen to paper on new cloud service," said a fourth person.
Spokesperson for Apple and the labels of all refused them to comment on.
Big technology companies are competing leaders in new ways for fans to access songs and videos. As sales of physical media such as CDs and DVDs fall quickly, the giant tech are betting that they can sell subscriptions to media, software and innovative devices related to these services.
Amazon is the leading maker e-reader, Apple and Google are in competition on mobile devices smartphones and Tablet platforms.
Apple has discussed plans for a service oriented cloud iTunes on and off year last with labels. It has strengthened recently, negotiations according to these people. It is now expected that Apple will probably be able to announce cloud music plans in time for the developers Conference in the world of Apple June 6.
Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, has disclosed products past, including the iPhone 4, at the WWDC.
There is a chance that the new music service could be ready to launch by June 6, but will also deals with the publishers of the song. Apple has opened talks with some editors, according to two people.
Amazon and Google has launched music locker service in recent weeks without new licence agreements, leading to threats of legal action from some music companies. At the time, Amazon has argued its cloud service drive does not have licensing and said downloaded music belongs to the users, something of dispute tags.
(Reported by Yinka Adegoke; additional reports of Poornima Gupta in San Francisco; editing by Andre Grenon)
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