Small Local Segments Could Eliminate Buffering for Apple Cloud Music

Apple's upcoming cloud music service could utilize small locally stored song snippets to eliminate buffering time, according to a patent found by AppleInsider.

The patent entitled, "Local Storage of a Portion of Streamed Media Items," describes a new iTunes option that would 'sync partial music'.

Using this method, users could dramatically reduce the amount of storage used by their music library on their mobile device. Segments of the song would be stored locally, and the iOS software would fill in the gaps by obtaining the rest of the track from a file stored in the cloud.

Apple has reportedly signed two out of the four major labels to their upcoming service which will likely be unveiled at WWDC 2011.

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