In a move that may anger record labels, Apple has quietly enabled music streaming capability for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch owners.
While the MobileMe iDisk update that makes audio streaming possible was released to users nearly a month ago, the feature was widely revealed this week via a blog post by MP3Tunes CEO Michael Robertson.
The telling release note with the update was apparently not noticed earlier, as Apple buried it quite far down in their list of changes. The note simply states that the app can now, “Play audio from your iDisk while using another app.”
Robertson sheds light on the real meaning of the note in his post:
“What this means is that for any music files such as MP3 or Apple's AAC files stored in your iDisk account you can play them on your devices while you use your device for other operations. This makes streaming practical from Apple's online storage. This new release brings this capability to iPhone, iTouch and iPad. You can stream music to multiple devices simultaneously.”
The capability is rather limited, only allowing one file at a time to be uploaded, no playlist support, and no cover art support. Despite the limitations, record companies are likely to be at least a little bit miffed by Apple’s actions.
Where labels like Universal Music Group have requested that streaming their music requires a license and a per-stream fee, the iDisk streaming capability is definitely in violation as it allows unlimited sharing and background streaming without a license.
It will definitely be interesting to see how this story plays out, as the results will likely impact the future operations of cloud-based music services. Apple is almost certainly defiantly testing their limits with this move. Now we get to sit back and wait to see how the record labels decide to respond. Apple may just end up in court again over this little maneuver. They certainly do have a busy legal team these days.
