Apple announces iTunes Match music service for $24.99 per year - Page 3

You look at it the wrong way. How about pay $25 a year and keep pirating music forever? They can't force you to buy on iTunes only after matching, can they? The only limitation, as far as I can see, is 25,000 songs.

US only? I hope that's only because they haven't reached deals with the labels in other countries. If not, this is of no use to anyone in the rest of the world.

Okay, so AppleInsider has removed the term "streaming" from the story title concerning iTunes Match. So, that's maybe another confirmation that this is just a match and download service (i.e. wireless sync) rather than a true iTunes streaming service. Thus, you are still required to duplicate and store everything that you have on every device that you own rather than allowing you to stream from one copy that is stored in the "cloud."

Ok, this is what I am thinking. I have a whole crap load of songs, some from CDs I have owned and ripped, others from friends, and yet most of my music comes from iTunes. This is what I am confused about.

iTunes in the Cloud automatically has knowledge of the songs that come from iTunes. Now, if I do iTunes Match, and lets just say (for humor's sake) that it matched every single song of mine, and replaced it with a 256 Kbps AAC file. (Which is really cool, BTW.) Now, do those files become a part of that Cloud version of it (after all, those files did come from iTunes), or are they marked differently? Also, if I stop paying, what happens to those new files?

A lot of questions.... However, if it is how I hope it is (i.e. it converts all of the ones to iTunes Cloud compatible versions of it, and then gets synced up to the cloud like all of my other purchases and is a permanent replacement), then a single yearly fee of $25 to do that conversion is an absolute steal.

I understood it to be both, but more so the other way around. If it were simply "access to the matching process," why is it a reoccuring yearly service? Seems to me to be a back door way of implementing a subscription service. I have a hard time believing the RIAA would easily agree to allow pirates to exchange thousands of songs for completely legitimate ones, free of charge (at $25 a year for thousands of songs you've pirated, that is essentially free). Something has to give somewhere. As I understood it, Matching keeps those songs in the iCloud, and from the iCloud you can push songs to any i-devices (even back to the PC where the pirated music originated from). However, once the Matching service expires, I'd imagine your playback access is cut off across all your devices- i.e. not just the service, but the goods too. This would be devious of the RIAA, hoping that unsuspecting pirates will delete all their pirated music (the hard copies) after they Match using iTunes in the Cloud. Then Apple and the RIAA has the pirates hook, line, and sinker. Either pay to continue using the music which is now cloud-based, or lose access.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on any of my interpretations on the iCloud service, but I think this will be how it plays out.

wow - I was under the impression it was streaming. sadly disappointed but I still like the service for what it's worth.

I have been having similar thoughts - because the only way they could possibly have to determine that a track that you have stored locally is a ripped copy of your legitimate purchase vs a pirated download - would be if the file itself had some sort of digital signature embedded in it - which goes back to a DRM type strategy of sorts.

Or perhaps part of the strategy is to get an idea of just how many tracks are really out there - so Apple can show the record labels with real numbers how accurate their fears of rampant piracy happen to be.

I would also expect some sort of "enhancements" vis a vis a subscription and or streaming service - an extension of the Genius Playlists type of thing - here are suggested tracks, would you like to buy them (so you can have you own local copy).

It seems everyone is misunderstanding what this is.

You have a music collection comprised of iTunes purchases, Amazon/Google/etc purchases, ripped CDs and possibly pirated music.

Apple will try to match each song you have to their database. This matching will rely on the same kind of algorithms other software uses. You know those apps that listen to the raido or TV through the devices microphone and tell you what song or TV show it is? It will be similar to that. File names, track length, metadata can all be changed or manipulated by the user and are in no way reliable.

Songs Apple cannot match will be uploaded to their servers.

Now your whole collection is available to you on the go....as long as you have an Internet connection. So, really this is a streaming service. The idea is you no longer have to waste storage space for your music, Apple will do it for you.

You do not get a new/free copy of the music, you get access to remote copy of your music.

Make sense?

No, it's a backup and sync service, not streaming service

Yeah, good points, I could easily see Apple flipping the kill switch on those files, similar to a expiring movie rental - I hope you're wrong though.

I thought there may still be value in the matching service for some users after the initial year due to buying new music drm-free, for example, from amazon, or a used cd.

If so, maybe many users would re-sub to the service.

I'll bet there's a lot more users that have questionably-sourced music libraries from years ago as opposed to users who are still getting most of their content illegally, since piracy has been made more difficult for the average user. If so, labels won't have to be so concerned about ongoing cycles of "download illegal copies and legitimize them" by the consumer.

For those complaining about the lack of streaming, you can stream from iTunes to your iOS device using the free app and free software AudioGalaxy. It's really easy to use. Look for it in the iTunes Store.

I'm not sure this is correct. It's not a streaming service in the sense of playing a song at the same time as downloading it, it still uses sync (Apple calls it "push" on their website).

So even though your whole library will be available to you everywhere, I think you will have to swap songs in and out if your device is too small.

And that available-anywhere business is actually free. The only time you need to pay is in you want to use iTunes Match to upgrade your pirated songs.

1. The iTunes cloud - is not a streaming service in the strict sense of the word - if you have purchased a track from Apple you will now be able to download that track to any authorized device on your iTunes account any time you are connected to the internet - so yes you could delete a bunch of tracks off your iOS device - then re-download a different set of tracks - in order to change up what is contained on your iOS device - but it is not like Pandora or internet radio where you are playing the data stream as it comes down and then it is gone after played. Free - or rather included in the purchase price of the content.

2. iTunes Match - scans your library - downloads high quality tracks if available - and uploads your content that is not able to be matched - making YOUR content - that does not exist on the iTunes store and by definition was NOT purchased from Apple - (along with tracks you purchased elsewhere that do match content in Apple's catalog) - thereby making YOUR content available to YOU for internet download directly to any authorized iOS device - without the need to return to your computer and sync the device using a computer. $24.99 a year - but what happens if you stop paying to any content - by definition you already HAD the content BEFORE you paid - perhaps at lower quality.

limitation is 5GB of YOUR content - I have 27GB of stuff - of course 90% of that is likely to be a match for stuff that is already in the Apple catalog - some folks have TBs of content - does 256kbps increase file size?

This is the big question.

No, there is not a 5GB limit, the limit is 25.000 songs

Post of the day!

That's not the issue I'm talking about. Right or wrong, there are dishonest people. How will Apple deal with that in this system? There are also people who need to be kept honest, not to mention a whole debate on the ethics of the music industry to begin with.

Whatever the case, the system needs to work in a way the deals with piracy, or it won't work as planned. I'm sure it's been thought through, but I'm baffled as to how this can work, unless piracy is an accepted part of it.

As others have mentioned, it probably will use some sort of psychoacoustic analysis, but even that seems like it would be easily cracked. For example, instead of trading high quality FLACs or even higher bit rate MP3s, pirates could simply post 64kbps files, allowing iTunes to then upconvert via matching to 256kbps AAC.

As for me personally, I'm ecstatic because I ripped my CD collection a long time ago when it would barely fit on a 250GB drive. I was planning on re-ripping it to 256kbps AAC, but now can just let Apple do most of the work for me.

The record companies was paid millions for the deal and will probably get a piece of the $25 fee. That way they will get money from the pirates (and people not pirating wil chip in).

Sounds to me as though iTunes Match *is* streaming. It doesn't say it copies all that data to your other devices, just that those tracks are available on them. In other words, you're likely paying $25 a year to stream your ripped music across all devices at top iTunes quality. Only items they don't have at the iTunes Store get copied. Not a great deal, then, but not terrible, either.

Think of it from the studio point of view: today they make nothing off pirates, now they can make $25/year. And honest people will presumably continue to be honest, because they're honest, so that revenue stream won't be effected.

Yes pirates can now start swapping low bitrate versions and getting free upgrades, but that doesn't change the fact that the studios are making money where they were making none before.

And maybe this is a two step process. By offering a matching model, it's quite likely the largest pirates will be attracted to it. And once they have been using it a few years, offer access to the whole library regardless of whether you have a copy, i.e. a subscription music service like cable tv. Then even the 60kbps versions would stop being swapped.

"Now you can download music youve purchased to all your devices. When you buy music from iTunes, iCloud stores your purchase history. So you can see the music youve bought no matter which device you bought it on. You can access your purchase history from the iTunes Store on your Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. And since you already own that music, you can tap to download your songs or albums to any of your devices.1"

No, it's no streaming

http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/

re: piracy: Due to cheaper & more convenient downloads, and the labels' legal attacks on those who serve & those who download illegal files, it's a lot more work for the average user to get pirated tracks than it used to be. Maybe Apple has just subsidized the labels' (diminishing) risk of loss from piracy, paying them cash in exchange for what would be a user experience that Apple's competition cannot match.

Apple would get what it wants, a superior product.

The labels would continue to litigate downloaders & servers.

(Although I could see Match not offering _total_ amnesty, i.e. if 83,000 people had a copy of a song with the exact same file creation date, an "are you kidding me?" dialog pops up when you try to match it, lol)


very interesting idea

I think (hope) that only the beta is US only. The release version will be available to anywhere where there's an iTunes store.

It seems to be a bit of both. It's only songs you already own, so it's not a pure streaming service. But It is a safe bet that it will be "mostly" streaming to your other devices, probably with a lot of local caching. This will make it hard (although perhaps not impossible) to use the service to mirror illicit copies across your devices and then discontinue. Discontinue and you lose access to those songs on all devices except those on which they originally reside

I'm confused.

New T&C in iTunes say that I can only switch accounts on my devices once every 90 days.

The T&C also state that I cannot access an iTunes account outside of the country it is registered in.

I travel between the US and Canada several times each month. For this reason, I have two accounts, one on the US store, and one on the Canadian store.

Now what am I supposed to do? Only access iTunes stores when I'm in one country or the other?

What about my cloud syncing? how will that work? No access when I'm outside of Canada/US?

To store songs I already own? When the rest of the iCloud / iTunes features are free (i.e., anything I've purchased on iTunes is there for free forever)? Seems kinda stingy to me.

Not streaming - downloading. You can browse all your music in the iCloud then download anything to any iDevice. I'm trying it now with my iPad and after I selected a song it doesn't start playing, it begins downloading. That's not a streaming service.

I think what's not clear (yet) to many people is what this means in practice. Say I've ripped "Sierrajeff's song" off a legit CD, and then (i) changed the stop time (to get rid of seconds of applause at the end) and (ii) changed the composer info (so that it's the same format as the composer's name in other records).

Will the version in the cloud be the studio cut of "Sierrajeff's song", applause and all, and with idiosyncratic composer info? Or will it be the studio cut but with some add-on notes in the cloud that says "when you download to Sierrajeff, stop the audio at 4:05 and change the composer to S. Jeff not Jeff, S."? Or will the cloud say "gosh, seems different than the studio cut in these non-material ways - guess I'll upload the whole thing since this version isn't in the iTunes library"?

Apparently i was the one missunderstanding.

So it's basically a remote sync to Apples's servers as opposed to your local iTunes?

They are matching to what they have - the common version of that track. If you want yo keep the modified version you can sync that in another way from iTunes over wifi.

It's the price of being an early adopter - nothing new or unique here; it's no different than having paid $15 for a CD in 1988 that cost $5 in 1998. "Sorry Charlie" but I'm not going to cry over it.

Tinfoil hats work for that, too.

Anyone 'could possibly' have access to... not 'will'.

and 'anyone' is not equal to 'everyone'

and 'what g[G]overnment?' I'm less concerned about 'my' Government, then 'their government,' and the hackers under employ.

grammar aside, you don't trust anyone outside of your physical security. That's fair. Do you Bank? Do you drive? Do you file taxes? Do you use wireless? Do you use SSL. Do you work for an employer? Do you have cable TV? and ISP? or do you do all your surfing from the public library? Heck you're even posting to this non-encrypted site. You're pouring data into the system, and now your worried about your music library being used against you?

I dare say you're getting all worked up over a contractual agreement for securing your data with a services vendor that, unless you live under a rock and consider the first perimeter of your physical security the business end of your locked/loaded/safety off AK-47, you're already providing more than enough information into Carnivore to make this little extra seem superfluous.

The storage needs for up to 25,000 songs are larger than the rest.

You should really check your own posts before you start correcting grammar.

I will use the free service. The iTunes Match I will skip and make do with my good ol' CD.

I've ripped a lot of CDs to 320 kbps. Does this mean my music will be downgraded to 256 AAC in the iCloud? Should there be a checkmark and box for that on AI's informative box? Because with Amazon and Google, my higher-quality rips won't be downgraded. Also, I'd bet money that google's service will allow the FLAC format, which will never exist in the iCloud.

And shouldn't the informative box also tell us that if iTunes doesn't find an exact match to your CD rip for whatever reason, it will also be uploaded, just like Google and Amazon, and therefore your collection might also take "weeks" to upload?

Reason: 99.9% of the world doesn't give a hoot to have FLAC, Apple Lossless Audio as an option to download for music they buy, especially when the Telcos are putting caps on monthly downloading.

So if, for example, each song is 10 MB, then Apple's catalog will take roughly 171TB. That's pretty small comparing to data center. No wonder they can afford to scale it up so much and upload other tracks which don't match.

True, but the upgrade price was a joke to begin with. I guess I'm at fault for wanting songs that were not tied down with DRM and not expecting the record labels to ever be supportive of an idea like iTunes Match.

And I don't quite think that digital files lose their value the same way a physical product does. The labels don't seem to think that.

Piracy IS an accepted part of it. Because they have no other choice.

When the iTunes store first opened, people thought it was insane because anyone could just pirate music, so why buy it? And yet they've sold billions of songs - people are simply willing to pay for things.

Sure, you can probably hack the system and get iTunes copies of songs. But the people who would do that are already pirating everything anyway (not to mention it's likely easier to do that then to try and hack this new iTunes system). Pretty much anything is available for free right now, why should the labels be that concerned about potential abuse of this system, especially if someone switches from paying nothing and pirating everything to at least paying $25 per year?



There's no mention of streaming in that quote - "tap to DOWNLOAD" sure makes it sound like it's, you know, a download.

The iOS app update is available, and it sure sounds like it is downloading songs and not streaming them.