No iCloud Music for UK Until 2012
This article may make the people in UK sad but unfortunately people in UK will have to wait till at least early 2012 to start using the music portion of the iCloud services according to a spokesman for the Performing Right Society (PRS) who told the telegraphy that "negotiations with Apple about ensuring rights in the UK had started but were at a very early stage".
The music labels want to make sure that they are paid correctly for their work and efforts, and Apple is in no hurry. Apple wants to make sure that there are no problems in the future.
Mark Mulligan, vice president and research director at Forrester Research, said: “Apple’s cloud music service will not launch in the UK until at least quarter one of 2012. These types of negotiations take a long time… For one thing the UK arms of all the major record labels are biding their time and waiting to see how the service affects download sales in the US before they sign up to anything.”
Since music part of icloud also include iTunes Match believe that even iTunes match will not launch in UK before 2012.
As of now Apple has only signed deals with music labels in the US and other countries will soon follow but this soon may be as long as 2012 for some countries (countries like India do not even have a music store, forget about cloud music).
While Apple is doing things the hard way, Amazon (another cloud music service provider) is not signing any deals with music labels arguing that no licenses are needed because users are uploading the music which they already own.
Apple's match service is quite awesome and time saving but Apple has heavily invested in it while Amazon's cloud service is slow but investment done by Amazon is pretty less when compared to Apple.
Only time will tell whether this huge investment by Apple is worth it.
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