Amazon defied the record labels by launching an unlicensed personal cloud music service. Since then speculation has swirled about licensing discussions Amazon, Google and Apple are having with the 4 major record labels.
Universal Music Group wants only songs with digital receipts to be added to lockers — songs ripped from CDs or purchased before retailers added unique identifiers would be excluded. Sony wants loading to happen from only one computer and wants to restrict downloading to one emergency download only. Warner Music Group wants a central locker authority to administer all locker assignments.
The challenge for cloud services is how to appease the record labels and still have a consumer friendly service. Even one of these restrictions renders a cloud service mostly useless. Combined they would make a locker service utterly worthless.
--MR
