Indeed, the burning question about Apple and its widely anticipated cloud-based music service isn’t so much whether it will happen (“count on it” seems to be the prevailing opinion) but how much it’ll cost.

Adding fuel to the fire is BusinessWeek, which just posted a story (based on the word of three anonymous sources “briefed on the talks”) detailing the so-called “iCloud” service, which would scan the music on your hard drive and then mirror your tunes—all of them, even those you may have gotten through shady channels—on a massive bank of remote servers.

Once your music is safely stored on iCloud (which isn’t the official name, mind you; that’s just what tech bloggers are calling it for now), you’d be able to stream your music to any Net-connected PC, Mac, iPhone, or iPad. That means you could tap into your massive music collection practically anywhere, from the desktop in your office to a Wi-Fi café in Paris.

Pretty cool—but as BusinessWeek reports, Apple can’t make its iCloud dreams happen without inking deals with the major music labels, and the labels are certainly looking for some serious cash. Apple will likely share that expense with us music lovers in the form of a subscription fee, BusinessWeek adds … and yes, that means you’d essentially be paying up for the privilege of streaming the tunes you already own.

How much might we be talking about, here? BusinessWeek speculates that “iCloud” streaming might be included in Apple’s current, $99-per-year MobileMe service (which already includes cloud-based email, calendars, contacts, and storage). Divide 99 bucks by 12 months and you’d get $8.33 a month, or just a little more than a monthly subscription to Netflix’s movie-streaming service.

Of course, Apple may charge more—or less—for iCloud access…which (of course) hasn’t even been officially announced yet.

Here’s the thing: Hypothetically, how much would you be willing to pay—if anything—to stream your music from the cloud?

Source: BusinessWeek

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The promotion, which is only good for today (Monday the 23rd), lets you grab every track from Gaga’s new “Born This Way” album and either download the tracks as standard MP3 music files or stuff them into Amazon’s just-launched Cloud Player, an online storage locker that lets you stream your tunes on any PC or Android phone.

Those who snap up Amazon’s Gaga deal are also being promised that their basic 5GB Cloud Player storage plans will be upgraded to 20GB for a year, with Amazon advising customers in the fine print that the upgrade could take “up to three hours” to process.

But the wait appears to apply to the Gaga tracks as well as 20GB upgrade, with dozens of confused, angry customers complaining that most of their new “Born This Way” tracks have yet to appear in their online Cloud Players. Indeed, I paid 99 cents myself for the Gaga promotion almost two hours ago, and for now, I’ve only got a single track (“Americano”) and the digital booklet in my Cloud Player locker. (I’ve reached out to Amazon for comment on the delay, and I’ll update this post if I hear anything back.)

“Way to go on giving me 1 song,” wrote one annoyed customer in the user-reviews section. “Great job being prepared to support your promo.”

“I’m hopeful that this is just an Amazon glitch due to high volume of orders,” complained another. “However I’m surprised it is still not complete after such a long time for a ‘digital instant’ order.”

Of course, for every snipe about the missing Gaga songs, there’s another scolding the mob for being so impatient. “I’m not exactly sure why so many users are complaining,” wrote a customer from Chicago, who added that more and more tracks began appearing in his account as the hours wore on. “People get too worked up about having to wait a few minutes for something. Just because it’s digital, doesn’t mean it’s instant. Patience is a virtue.”

Well, maybe so … but then again, Amazon’s promo for the 99-cent Gaga deal does promise that we’ll be able to “start listening immediately with Cloud Player.”

The moral of the story? For customers … don’t be surprised if an almost too-good-to-be true offer like this one leads to a server-snaring stampede.

And for companies like Amazon: if you’re going to sell one of the most anticipated albums of the year for just 99 cents, you’d better make it crystal clear to customers that they may not get instant gratification—particularly if you’re hoping to show off a new cloud-based music service.

Update: In a tweet Monday afternoon, Amazon said it was “experiencing very high volume” from the Lady Gaga offer and assured customers that they would get the “full” album eventually:

We’re currently experiencing very high volume. If you order today, you will get the full @ladygaga album for $.99. Thanks for your patience.

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That’s the idea behind the new “in the cloud” digital music lockers that Amazon, Google, and now (supposedly) Apple are scrambling to launch. Nice idea, but getting all your music up into the “cloud” can be a tedious, time-consumer chore … unless you go the “scan and match” way.

While both Amazon and Google managed to beat Apple to the punch with their respective online music lockers (Amazon’s is available now, while Google’s is still in limited beta), the two services come with a serious wrinkle: namely, you have to upload each and every tune to your locker-in-the-cloud, a process that takes at least a few minutes per song. Multiply that by, say, 30 or 40 albums, and you’ve got a serious wait on your hands.

This is why “scan and match” is a phrase you’ll be hearing a lot more of in the near future, at least where online music is concerned. With the “scan and match” method, rather than having to actually upload each and every tune in your collection into the sky, a music service can simply scan all the tracks on your PC’s hard drive, and then match them with a digital master in its cloud-based repository. Theoretically, you could have your entire music collection online and ready to go in minutes or even seconds, rather than hours or days.

The “scan and match” concept isn’t a new one, mind you. The first one I ever tried was MP3.com, a tiny online music company that burned brightly—and then flamed out—more than 10 years ago. Rather than scanning the music on your hard drive, MP3.com would access music discs in your system’s PC tray and instantly add the tracks to your account for online streaming. Pretty neat—so neat, in fact, that many (if not most) users started swapping CDs with their pals, adding music to their accounts from discs they didn’t own. Naturally, it didn’t take long for the big music labels to swoop down on MP3.com, ultimately shuttering the company for good.

But while MP3.com came and went, the “scan and match” methodology never quite went away. Some online music companies took the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” route with the music industry, signing deals with the labels that allowed for “scan and match” services for a fee. Take a company called Lala, which inked deals with the major labels that let it stream “scan and matched” songs to its users for 10 cents a track.

Interesting idea—so interesting, in fact, that none other than Apple bought Lala in late 2009. Now, guess which big tech company is rumored to launch its own “scan and match” music service in the coming weeks? That’s right: Apple.

Of course, the big question is whether the average user actually cares that much about streaming their music from the cloud. Sure, you’d be able to access your entire collection from your smartphone, but what if you don’t have a cellular signal, or if you’re close to your monthly 3G data limit? And what about the extra strain that streaming music puts on your phone’s battery?

Good questions, all—but the “scan-and-match” method of zapping music into the cloud (especially if it is, indeed, adopted by Apple) is likely to take digital music lockers into the mainstream. Whether they’ll stay there is … well, up in the air.

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