This is a guest post from Michael Robertson, a 12-year veteran of the digital music business. He is the founder and former CEO of digital music pioneer MP3.com. He is currently the CEO of music locker company MP3tunes. Robertson is also an adviser to Google Voice.

For years there’s been speculation that Apple would supplement their $1/song (now $1.29) iTunes business with a monthly subscription service, but their upcoming plans are quite different and once again are positioning them to lead the digital music industry into a new era. Leveraging their ubiquitous iTunes software Apple plans to upgrade their users almost over night to a cloud music service in an ambitious move to beat Amazon and others to a cloud music service. Record labels are wary to give Apple even greater dominance which is why Apple’s new strategy is designed to sidestep new licenses from the major labels.

Apple’s recent acquisition of digital music startup Lala rekindled speculation of an iTunes subscription service. There’s no shortage of subscription offerings (Napster, Rhapsody, Spotify, Pandora, etc), but none have attracted the millions of subscribers necessary to make the high royalty structures work. Experts have pondered that Apple’s design expertise and hardware integration could make subscription work. And leveraging Lala’s digital library, licenses from the major labels, and a management team who cycled through several business models including the ten cent web song rental could make it a reality. It’s a logical assumption, but after talking to a wide variety of insider sources it’s clear there is no upcoming Apple subscription service and Apple has far different plans. Read more