Apple Signs Another Major Label In Push For June 6 Cloud Music Launch

Apple Beats Labels Again

Apple is closer to announcing a licensed cloud music service during its Worldwide Developer Conference on June 6th, now that EMI has joined Warmer Music Group in licensing a proposed cloud music service, according to CNet. Several sources also report that deals with UMG and Sony are very closed to being signed.

Label execs that I’ve spoken to, believe that licences will allow Apple to deliver a more robust cloud music service than Google and Amazon’s unlicensed lockers. This, the labels hope, will force the two to cut label deals with them.But by using a negotiating strategy that allows Apple to debut with superior features, record labels may be once again helping to  cement Apple’s dominate status in music.

This narrative is nothing new. Labels chiefs rail against Apple’s control of 70% of the music download market, and then continue give in to Apple.  For Jobs, music in the cloud is a replay of a strategy the he;s used in other hugely successful Apple launches including iTunes, the iPod, the iPhone and most recently the iPad.  Steve Jobs knows that its far more important to be great, than to be first.

Written by Bruce Houghton