An iPhone app that allows users to access Amazon Cloud Player has been removed from the iTunes App Store, due to what its creator calls "legal issues."
The app, aMusic, comes not from Amazon but from startup Interactive Innovative Solutions. Until Tuesday, the app was available in the App Store for $1.99 and allowed users a way to access their Amazon tunes without having to go through a series of complex steps in a non-Safari browser app.
Mashable highlighted the app, along with its Google Music counterpart, gMusic [iTunes link] in a roundup of music apps and tools published last week.
"There are some legal issues with the music industry," James Clancey of IIS told Evolver.fm in a statement. about the removal of aMusic from the App Store. "The aMusic [app] is down temporarily. It will be back. Unfortunately I do not have a specific date when it will be back.
"Also, Apple has been delaying my gMusic update. I submitted it two weeks ago. Every other update I have submitted ... has been approved in under eight hours. So not sure what the deal is."
Sites like Evolver.fm and Cult of Mac are pointing the finger at music labels (who already have issues with Amazon and Google's forays into digital music storage) and Apple, which could view the apps as a competitor to iTunes.
The music industry has forced the removal of music apps from online stores in the past -- notably with Grooveshark. Grooveshark was removed from the App Store in 2010 and was also pulled from the Android Market earlier this spring.
Apple, meanwhile, pulled apps that facilitate BitTorrent activity. Still, once banned doesn't mean always banned. Apple famously refused to allow official and unofficial Google Voice apps from the App Store. But Apple relented 14 months later, allowing those apps (and an official variant) back in the App Store.