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There's been so much chatter about Apple iCloud that you'd think the streaming music service had already been announced and the deals inked. But it's still just a rumor until an Apple executive takes the stage and unleashes the Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music competitor in a spate of superlatives. That hasn't stopped  Businessweek  from stepping up with a good summary of all that is "known" thus far, while giving us some insight into the particulars of how the service will work and the motivations to make it happen. One revelation, sourced from three people in the know, claims that Apple will scan customers' iTunes libraries (hello, LaLa) and quickly mirror the contents on Apple's own servers -- no massive DSL-choking upload required. And Apple will do you the solid of "replacing" any low bitrate tracks with the "high-quality" versions it stores in its fully licensed music locker for streaming to your connected devic...

If you live in the US and own a Sonos whole-home audio system then the world of streaming audio truly is your oyster. You'd be hard pressed to name a single major  domestic  audio service not available to your S5 all-in-one or ZonePlayer setup. Today Sonos adds the MOG music service with high-quality 320kbps streams available on-demand or via customized artist-only radio stations. Better yet, you can sample the 11 million song library for free over the next 14-days before being asked to subscribe to the $9.99 per month Primo offering.

Who's better, Sammy Hagar or The Great Caruso? We know you have every track the Red Rocker ever laid down, but if you haven't upgraded your gramophones of the great Italian tenor, today is the first day of the rest of your life. The Library of Congress, working with Sony, now streams a collection of 10,000 historical recordings, including Caruso and other pre-1925 greats. This "National Jukebox" is a bit of a hodge-podge, including everything from early jazz to poetry to yodeling, but digging through the archive is half the fun. But while access to this material is great for sound preservationists, commenters on BoingBoing point out that it's not truly public domain work: thanks to our spaghetti-tangle of copyright arcana, Sony still owns the rights. It's allowing users to stream but not download, and technically could revoke its gratis license at any time. So get your Caruso fix while you can. The Washington Post The Library of Congress

It feels like just yesterday we charted the streaming music landscape, but it's already changed in a big way -- Google is muscling in on the likes of Rhapsody, Pandora and particularly Amazon with its Google Music Beta. Being able to take 20,000 of your personal tunes, stream them over the web and cache them locally on your device isn't functionality to sneeze at, so it's time we updated our charts. After the break, see how the big streaming services stack up. Service: Google Music Beta Amazon Cloud Player Price: Free... for now, by invitation only, in the US. Stores 20,000 songs. Between $20/year (20 GB) and $1,000/year for 1 TB Free sample: Everything, for now 5 GB free storage Type of streaming: Cloud Cloud What you pay for: Nothing, yet Additional storage capacity Mobile reach: Only Android 2.2+ Android and iOS web interface Unique Features: Locally cached, pinnable songs Access to Amazon's MP3 store, fully downloadable tracks Service: Pandora Slacke...

Amazon Cloud Player has been laying low following its scuffle with Sony Music, but that hasn't kept the company's developers from rolling a crucial new feature out -- support for Apple's iOS devices, which it didn't have on day one. Despite running in the Safari browser window, we've confirmed that songs will indeed play. If you've got a device handy, give it a try yourself; otherwise, we'll update with impressions a little later this evening. Update : Great news -- we ran the Cloud Player on an original iPad and iPhone 3GS without a hitch. In fact, there was very little (if any) lag or time delay when buffering a new song, and were able to refresh playlists and other information quickly. The interface of the Cloud Player is almost the same as -- if not identical to -- the page that loads up on your computer browser. Even better, the Cloud Player works flawlessly with the multitasking controls in iOS; the usual forward/pause/volume options are all usabl...