Peter Kafka of "All Things Digital" reports (http://macte.ch/SUOYY) says Apple has already procured deals from at least two of the big four labels (Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony and EMI) within the last two months for its online music locker service.

“They’ve been very aggressive and thoughtful about it,” an "industry executive" tells Kafka. “It feels like they want to go pretty soon.”

Kafka says industry executives he's spoken to haven’t seen Apple’s service themselves, but say they’re aware of the broad strokes. The idea is that Apple will let users store songs they’ve purchased from its iTunes store, as well as others songs stored on their hard drives, and listen to them on multiple devices, he says.


The cloud-based music locker is almost certain to use the gigantic data center Apple is building in North Carolina. In fact, Apple has completed work on an online music storage service and is set to launch it ahead of Google, "whose own music efforts have stalled," reports "Reuters" (http://macte.ch/TDvRe), quoting "several people familiar with both companies' plans."

Apple's plans will allow iTunes customers to store their songs on a remote server, and then access them from wherever they have an Internet connection, the article says. However, "Reuters" adds that Apple hasn't yet signed any new licenses for the service.