Music industry sources suggest that Apple has signed up the four major US labels for a Spotify-style streaming service
Apple's chief executive, Steve Jobs, will make a rare public appearance on Monday to show off a new music subscription and content sharing service called iCloud, and new software to power the iPhone.
Jobs, 56, is unexpectedly breaking his medical leave from the company to appear at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Music industry sources indicate that Apple has now signed up the four major music labels in the US – Sony, Universal, EMI and Warner Music – for iCloud. It is thought that it will provide a music streaming service in the US similar to that available in Europe from Spotify. However it is not clear whether the music elements of iCloud will initially be available outside the US.
Reports by the New York Post suggest that Apple has had to make upfront payments to the labels of between $100m (£61m) and $150m to secure their business and ensure that it gets a lead over Spotify and rival music services launched in March and May from Amazon and Google.
Jobs is also scheduled to show off the new version of the software to run the hugely successful iPhone – but analysts are not expecting to see a new version of the device itself before September. They think that Apple is shifting its timing so that iPhone releases come closer to Christmas, in order to boost seasonal sales.
The Apple chief will have an audience of app developers who may also be keen to know how the company is going to protect them from a growing number of threats from patent holders in the US, where software can be patented. In the past two months more than a dozen developers for the iPhone have been sued by companies which claim to have patents covering the systems they use, and demanding payments. The developers, though, hope that Apple will seek to protect them because if developers are scared off there will be fewer apps for the iPhone and iPad – which will hit Apple's sales.
Jobs's presence is surprising because he announced in January that he would be taking time away from the company for unexplained medical reasons. It is believed that they are related to his surgery in 2004 for neuroendocrine cancer in the pancreas, a treatable condition, and a subsequent liver transplant. Jobs appeared very gaunt in pictures published this year, such as at a dinner with Barack Obama in February and his only other public appearance, to launch the iPad 2 tablet in March.
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