image by José Picardo via Flickr

The news that Apple's iCloud will launch with a "scan and match" feature suggests that the service has a major advantage over the offerings from Amazon and Google, both of which requires users to upload their digital music files to the cloud. The size of that advantage, however, remains to be determined: Will the deals Apple reached with the four major label groups allow it to give users access to online versions of all of the music files on their hard drives, or just the digital tracks purchased from the iTunes store and other digital music retailers? If it's the former, it'd be an advantage that would pretty much force Amazon and Google to reach similar deals with the label groups. If the latter, the Apple edge would be considerably smaller, as purchased tracks represent a small portion of most digital music collections.

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