Cole Garner Hill

We first started hearing murmurs of Apple’s intentions to enter the Internet music streaming service game around the time of the company’s big iPhone 5 event, and now it seems we may be waiting a little longer than expected. Speaking to a “source close to the situation,” Sony/ATV, the world’s largest music publisher, and Apple can’t reach an agreement on a per-song rights fee, according to the New York Post.

Such rights are usually a fraction of a cent per stream, but Sony/ATV was allegedly seeking a higher royalty rate from Apple.

Apple is seeking far more flexible licensing than the agreements Pandora, the current dominant Internet radio service, has managed to arrange. Apple’s licenses would allow users to play a selected artist more times than Pandora, and would allow the company to point people to the iTunes Store to generate music sales.
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