According to Digital Music News, Best Buy will be launching their own scan-n-match music cloud service. Though an official announcement has yet to be made, the news was leaked by Catch Media, Inc., a London-based media technology partner that helped Best Buy launch a cloud-enabled music service in the UK. Best Buy’s Music Anywhere in the UK is capable on Androids and Blackberry phones, and also has the backing from labels. Now it appears that Best Buy is about to bring their service over to the U.S.
Though they couldn’t go into full details about the Best Buy Music Cloud, Catch Media confirmed the following:
“The fully-licensed service is expected to be rolled out in the US over the summer in cooperation with the music industry.”
So there you have it, Best Buy’s music cloud service will (supposedly) have label backing and will be available this Summer (assuming nothing goes wrong with negotiations). As if Spotify didn’t already have enough competition to worry about leading up to their U.S. debut.
One thing that isn’t clear, as Digital Music News points out, is whether Napster will play a role in Best Buy’s Music Cloud. It would make sense for Best Buy to incorporate Napster (the one time file-sharing king/now online music store Best Buy bought in 2008) in some fashion. Then again, when was the last time you bought music from Napster?
More is still developing about the Best Buy Music Cloud. We’ll keep you posted when more is revealed. If you’re interested at getting a sneak peak at what could be, you can download the Android app for the UK version of the service in the States.
