Reid Dossinger

After thinking a little more about  the post I wrote on Saturday  about how Apple's deals with the major labels aren't really that much of an advantage, I started thinking about what Apple could do with their cloud music offering that would truly make it immediately and obviously superior to what Google and Amazon have to offer. Any conversation I have with like-minded music geeks about music in the cloud always ends up the same way: that the products so far are interesting, but aren't really worth our while. Too slow, too inaccessible, not enough storage, not worth the cost.  But what features could Apple offer that would trump Amazon and Google, and just as importantly, actually make it worth spending money on? Make it sync exactly with iTunes Deals with the major labels will only do so much. Apple needs to figure out a way that your cloud iTunes library looks exactly like your desktop iTunes library. I'm one of those music/Apple geeks that The Onion  made ...

TechCrunch (among others) has been  drooling  over Apple starting to sign licensing deals with some of the major music labels for their inevitable (and, from the looks of it, coming soon) cloud music player/storage, finally making good on their purchase of the much-missed Lala. The standard line is that, because Apple is succeeding where both Amazon and Google failed in getting the major labels, that they'll beat their competitors handily. But what that assumption misses is that success in this area will have nothing to do with major labels. It will only have to do with the quality of the product. Now, Apple has a reputation for turning our quality products, so there's no reason to believe that they won't have a better product, but the deals with the music labels will be a minor factor into the quality of the product they're able to turn out. TechCrunch keeps mentioning how the agreements with the labels means that Apple will be able to provide a product that won...