Nov 16, 2010 10:40 GMT  ·  By

Details regarding Apple’s forthcoming iTunes announcement are likely already known, with confirmation from Cupertino high-ups just hours away. In this report, Softpedia outlines some of the most likely updates to emerge today from Cupertino. Although the details in this report may sound like certain facts, we’d like to note that they remain pure speculation until Apple issues its official statement.

The Internet was brimming with talk of an upcoming cloud-based service facilitated by Apple’s new billion-dollar, 500,000-square-foot data center located in North Carolina even before Apple posted yesterday’s banner on the home page of Apple.com.

Now that Apple has confirmed it has an iTunes-related announcement to make, there is even more room for speculation that an a-la-carte subscription music service, similar to Spotify or Rhapsody, is in the works at Apple.

The Mac maker is also known to have acquired LaLa.com, a music-streaming startup, to implement some of their expertise into Apple’s own business model, one way or another.

MacRumors is reporting that information gathered from the underlying code in iTunes 10.1 suggests Apple is on track to launch some kind of "iTunes Live Stream" service.

Where do you put that cloud-services are picking up so fast not even Apple can keep up with the growing trend. But rest assured, the Cupertino giant will dip its first toe in the cloud-sea today.

It’s also a good way to have more control over the user’s media library, is it not? And who would want this most, if not the high-ups at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California?

The iTunes application itself could use some redesigning. It's much too cluttered already, many will agree. However, with iTunes 10 just recently released, there is not much hope for a completely revamped interface. Don’t even get us started on the application icon.

But it’s clearly not far fetched either, given that today’s upcoming announcement is all about iTunes. And there is clearly more room for simplicity in the app's main window.

Maybe we’ll even see the service broken apart into separate applications, like many Softpedia readers have suggested in the past. In fact, we believe that this is very likely in the foreseeable future.

Going by how much people hate the icon and the clutter, we wouldn't be surprised to hear an announcement going: "iTunes Returns to the Way it Was, Icon and Everything." We kid, of course.

There is also talk that Apple could open more file formats to iTunes users. We believe this is also just a matter of when, not if the company is going to do it. And today seems like the most likely time to make that announcement.

Apparently, those who’ve embraced Ping, Apple’s music-based social network, don’t think too much of it. It will not be dropped, but it may see a few improvements implemented today. However, Ping is likely not the focus of Apple's planned announcements.

Finally, as noted by Dylan F. Tweney at Wired’s Gadget Lab, iTunes would make a terrific platform for carrying web content, not just pages with listings for iOS apps, iTunes music, and iTunes movies.

“Instead of publishing web pages to a public server, content creators could publish it through iTunes,” the author notes. We trust Apple has been looking into this for a while now, although big changes generally require many parties to agree on a single given aspect. With Apple, it’s always a gamble until the company has its final say.

Oh, and, if anyone thinks all this is not happening today, perhaps it would be worth noting that Apple has finally landed a deal with EMI to sell tracks from The Beatles via iTunes. According to The New York Times, a person familiar with the deal said that talks between Apple executives and EMI materialized as early as last week.

So, The Beatles are coming to iTunes. As far as today’s iTunes-announcement is concerned, we trust it’s either this, or the ranting above. What say you, dear readers?

And do share your own hopes for today's iTunes updates.

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