UK won't get music portion of iCloud until 2012
This is sure to disappoint our UK readers, but it looks like you'll have to wait until "at least" the first quarter of 2012 to take advantage of the music portion of Apple's iCloud service, according to a spokesman for the Performing Right Society (PRS). The spokesman told The Telegraph that Apple was in a "very early stage" of talks with major UK record labels, thus the iTunes Match feature of iCloud that Apple announced on Monday wouldn't be coming to the UK this year.
PRS represents UK composers, songwriters and music publishers and makes sure they are paid fairly for their work. "The licensing team at the PRS have started talks with Apple, but are a long way off from any deals being signed...It is very much the early stages of the negotiations and is similar to the launch of iTunes -- which began in the US and took a while to roll out to other countries," the spokesperson said.
Adding to the PRS comments, a music executive at a major UK label told the Telegraph that "Tentative talks have begun between the major labels and Apple in the UK. However, all talks are at the really early stages and no one expects to see the cloud music service live on this side of the pond until 2012." Waiting for iTunes Match in the UK will cause early adopters to grumble, but at least they can use the rest of iCloud's features, like email, address book, calendar and document sharing, and redownload of removed apps the day all those features are available to US users.
