Two developments are heating things up again on the music front. First came leaks of negotiations between Apple and the major labels over the company’s plans for music streaming in the wake of its December 2009 acquisition of Lala. Rumors are that Apple is pitching the idea of extending unlimited, cloud-based streaming privileges to music tracks purchased on iTunes. The notion is that if you downloaded a song on iTunes, you’ll no longer need to be at your computer or synchronize your iPod to listen to it. Once you release that song into the cloud, you can access it from any connected device.

There are a million potential wrinkles here. For instance:

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