Apple moves closer to the cloud

After reaching agreements with four major record labels to stream music on the Internet, Apple prepares its move into the cloud.

It is unclear whether the consumer-electronics giant has signed the deals with the companies -- Warner Music Group, Sony Music Group, EMI Group and Universal Music Group - or whether details of the agreements are still being ironed out, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

Representatives of the four labels declined to comment.

The move puts the company in line with Google and Amazon, both of which have introduced their own form of cloud-based music services lately.

In March Amazon rolled out its music locker service, dubbed Amazon Cloud Player, that lets users upload their music to Amazon's computers and listen to their songs from any browser.

Google followed suit in May with its Music Beta service.

Such a service would give people a wide array of music on-the-go, without having to worry about limited storage space and the need to physically connect different devices to transfer songs.

The cloud music service is likely to be unveiled at Apple's annual developers' conference in San Francisco, which gets under way on June 6.