Apple’s iRadio is almost a reality, and the service could be rolled out as early as this summer. Towards this, the Cupertino tech giant is reported to be in talks with several music companies and might have even made significant headway with at least two of the biggest, Universal and Warner. This marks an important development considering Universal can be considered among the last of the big names in the field to have signed up with Apple’s iCloud, while Warner wasn’t too comfy with cloud based storage until recently.
A report earlier in March had mentioned that the deal is getting delayed over negotiations of the royalty fees and such. As per the report, Apple is keen to pay 6 cents per 100 songs and the music labels want it to be 21 cents, which is what the Copyright Royalty Board has stipulated for companies that don’t support their own broadcast operations. Pandora pays 12 cents per 100 songs while Spotify pays at the rate of 36 cents. No doubt Apple has made good use of its clout and bargaining tactics to arrive at a much lower rate.
All of this can however make things a tad tougher for the likes of Spotify and other small time companies, while Google will likely emerge as Apple’s biggest competitor in the field of online music streaming. Google is also said to have reached a hush-hush deal with Warner that would provide music streaming services via Youtube.
So its a musical summer we are looking forward to, it seems.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.