Apple is preparing to launch its cloud music service, which allows users to listen to songs from an Internet connection.

Apple's iTunes music store faces rivals of Amazon.com, Google, and Spotify in Europe. In March, Amazon launched their music locker service, a.k.a. Amazon Cloud Player allowing users to upload their music and listen to it from any browser. Google released Music Beta in May.

Although Apple seems late in providing such a service, Apple does have one advantage over Google and Amazon: requisite licenses from major record labels. This allows the user to gain access to one's songs within minutes versus Amazon's and Google's services, which require hours or days for users to upload their song collections.

As Apple already has hundreds of millions of consumers buying, storing, and organizing their music collections in iTunes, providing cloud service would be no great feat.

Some say the service may be available as early as June 6 in San Francisco.

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