What Is Apple's Huge iTunes Surprise?

Apple is teasing a huge iTunes announcement on its website, with details to be announced at 10 a.m. ET tomorrow. Many in the music industry have expected Apple to launch a cloud-based music service of some kind ever since the company bought and then shuttered the streaming music site Lala.com. So here are three possibilities:

1) We're rooting for an all-you-can-eat subscription service: about $10 a month to access the entire iTunes catalog on your computer, iPod and iPhone. With the power of the Apple brand and the millions of credit cards numbers Apple has on file, an iTunes service would instantly legitimize music subscriptions — and change the record business forever.

2) The second option is slightly less revolutionary: Apple may launch an iTunes feature that will allow you to listen to your iTunes library remotely — on any computer, iPhone, iPod Touch or other device like the Apple TV. But would this feature live up to Apple's claim that tomorrow will be a day "that you'll never forget"?

3) What if it isn't about music at all? Since Apple has reportedly been putting massive resources behind new server farms for cloud services, they could well be planning a Netflix-style video-streaming subscription service. Or even music and movies together.

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

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