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Is Apple cloud music service in new OS X build?

Reports say a service known as Castle, a hidden feature in the latest build of Mac OS X Lion, point to new cloud-based service following the company's rumored purchase of domain name iCloud.com.

Lance Whitney Contributing Writer
Lance Whitney is a freelance technology writer and trainer and a former IT professional. He's written for Time, CNET, PCMag, and several other publications. He's the author of two tech books--one on Windows and another on LinkedIn.
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Lance Whitney
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Could the fruits of Apple's recent purchase of the iCloud.com domain already be showing up as a new cloud-based music service in the latest build of its upcoming Mac OS X Lion?

Following Apple's latest release of its Lion Developer Preview last Friday, French tech site Consomac.fr (Google Translate Version) spotted a reference to a hidden feature in the build codenamed "Castle," to which users can supposedly migrate their existing MobileMe accounts. Seeing this as evidence of a new major cloud-based initiative, the site believes Castle will include MobileMe, indicating that the new project will take on some of MobileMe's features.

Tech site AppleInsider echos the findings, pointing to Castle as a likely reference to the iCloud service that Apple has been busy creating. Sources reportedly told AppleInsider recently that Apple has already been using the service internally and is looking to expand it beyond just the scope of streaming music.

Late last week, Apple reportedly paid $4.5 million for the iCloud.com domain name. The deal further kicked up rumors that Apple is planning to launch a cloud-based music service that would let people store their songs on the Web to stream from any connected device. Typing iCloud.com now redirects to a domain called CloudMe.com.

Apple has already been signing up music labels to join in on the upcoming cloud-based music service, recently reining in Warner Music. That follows reports from AllThingsD that Apple has also coaxed Universal Music Group, Sony, and EMI to sign on the dotted line.

Consomac.fr believes we should have more concrete answers the first week of June when Apple kicks off its Worldwide Developers Conference, where it's expected to shed some light on its music in the clouds, the Lion OS, and other products coming down the pipeline.