We already know that Apple is going to introduce a new cloud-based music service, and it looks like Apple did lots of research on this thing to make sure that everything is smooth for their iOS devices.

Streaming music through 3G network isn’t exactly easy, as the speed of our internet is the bottleneck of everything really. So how does Apple overcome such issue? Well, here’s a new patent from Apple that might just be able to help Apple speed up things.

Apple has just file a patent of ‘partial music sync’ which seemed to be something that we will most definitely see in their cloud-based music service if Apple really manage to pull this off nicely, as usual with their magic wand.

It suggests that just a snippet of the beginning of a song (or movie, for that matter) could be stored locally on a device, and then be synced to the complete version in the cloud, which would let you begin playback “immediately” rather than having to wait for the usual buffering to take place.

The patent application also explains that the streaming playback could be adjusted based on the type of communications network, and that there would naturally be various means to authenticate your device and ensure that you actually own the music you’re streaming.

SOURCE via Apple Insider