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.
The labels know this will be used to upgrade questionable song files, and they're obviously okay with it, so any of you folks still waxing so moral about "the music stealing" should think about that.
The labels probably know they'll never see any revenue from a consumer's old library of crappy 10-yr old napster downloads, so they're offering amnesty. Rather, Apple bought amnesty for their users to smooth out the performance of Apple's product.
Exactly, I understood the subscription NOT to be "access to your matched content," but "access to the matching process."
So if one does have a few songs in their library from CD's they've lost, let's say, then one could sign up for one year of Match, and upgrade all their old mp3's to a "full legit itunes copy."
Is that right? Or are you paying for "access to the matched content?"
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.
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 songs 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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?
No, there is not a 5GB limit, the limit is 25.000 songs
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Now you can download music you?ve purchased to all your devices. When you buy music from iTunes, iCloud stores your purchase history. So you can see the music you?ve 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"
Comments
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.
The labels know this will be used to upgrade questionable song files, and they're obviously okay with it, so any of you folks still waxing so moral about "the music stealing" should think about that.
The labels probably know they'll never see any revenue from a consumer's old library of crappy 10-yr old napster downloads, so they're offering amnesty. Rather, Apple bought amnesty for their users to smooth out the performance of Apple's product.
Exactly, I understood the subscription NOT to be "access to your matched content," but "access to the matching process."
So if one does have a few songs in their library from CD's they've lost, let's say, then one could sign up for one year of Match, and upgrade all their old mp3's to a "full legit itunes copy."
Is that right? Or are you paying for "access to the matched content?"
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.
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 songs 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 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.
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).
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?
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.
No, it's a backup and sync service, not streaming service
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
what happens if you stop paying to any content?
This is the big question.
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?
No, there is not a 5GB limit, the limit is 25.000 songs
What am I missing here?
A moral compass?
Post of the day!
A moral compass?
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.
This is huge. But where is the STREAMING?
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Now you can download music you?ve purchased to all your devices. When you buy music from iTunes, iCloud stores your purchase history. So you can see the music you?ve 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/