Is Apple launching a cloud music service at WWDC?

Apple's cloud-based music service has been a rumor for sometime now. However, based on some recent reports, the service could be launching as soon as next month.

According to a recent article by Bloomberg, Apple has now signed on three major record labels (Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Warner Music Group) to its soon-to-be launched cloud music service.

Apple is a little late to the game, with Google and Amazon already offering a service. However, Apple is poised to dominate for two reasons. The first reason being that Apple's service is rumored to not require the user to upload his/her music collection. Simply having an iTunes account and having those songs already purchased and on record, will give the user access to the song. Second, there are more than 200 million people who already have iTunes accounts, so simply offering another way for an account owner to access his/her music seems like a slam dunk.

I have more than 30GB of music, most of which are MP3s of CDs that I own. I'm not sure what Apple's plans would be for that. Perhaps I would run a program that scans my hard drive and then matches music I own with Apple's own library? If not, this service won't be nearly as useful to me, since I have only bought a small number of albums and songs through iTunes over the years.

I am excited about the possibilities of streaming music from the web. Either via my iPhone, Apple TV, or some other method, having it all stream through the cloud will definitely make music management a breeze in the future.