So this is kind of interesting. Amazon launched its cloud based music service the other day (I’m listening to Pet Sounds at work right now, loaded off my home computer) and didn’t bother getting record label permission to do so. Amazon said it’s just another hard drive, no permission needed. Sony started grumbling right away about it, saying that legal action would be an option.
Now comes word that Amazon is going back to the record labels to negotiate new licensing deals.

Why? Storage.

Amazon would like to move to a system where you don’t have a little bit of server space carved out for just you. Instead, they want to have a massive server of songs and an index of who gets access to what. So they have one file of that Justin Bieber hit and then a list of who can hear it. To do that, they need a different level of permission from the labels