Is Apple About to Launch a Streaming Music Service?

The iTunes Music Store ain’t broke.  Far from it.  It has made Apple the number one music retailer in the world.  Why mess with it?

Because we’re slowly and inexorably moving away from purchasing music.  For many fans, access to music will one day trump possession of it.  If I can get whatever song I want whenever I want it wherever I happen to be on whatever device I choose, why do I need to own it?

Sure, there are many problems with streaming music services, not least of which are the difficulties involved licensing services across multiple territories (which is why we don’t have Spotify or Pandora in Canada) and arguments over what is fair compensation for artists, composers and rights holders.

As vexacious as those issues are, they’re short term problems.  They will be solved.  The notion of purchasing music will eventually became a niche activity, much like buying vinyl is today.

Apple is well aware of this, which is why they’re already moving in this direction with services like iCloud and iTunes match.  It would be logical to think that they need to get into the streaming business in order to protect their turf against the Spotifys of the world.

Steve Jobs was dead against this.  Then again, he wasn’t into dividends for shareholders, either, and look where we are today.

The buzz is starting to grow about some kind of Apple service.  They’ve got that spankin’ new data centre.  They have one of the best e-commerce set-ups in the world with a couple hundred million credit cards already on file.  They have the devices.  They have the music library.

The only question for me is “Are they going to pursue this or that mythical Apple TV that’s made of unicorn tears?”

They couldn’t do both, could they?  Could they?