iTunes Match: $24.99/Year, Matches Ripped Tunes, Offers Them In The Cloud

[Eric S.]

I'm very, very curious about what will be used for the matching logic....

I anticipate numerous glitches, if their track record on supplying album cover art for lesser known albums is any guide.

iTunes match has nothing to do with your MobileMe subscription. This is a new feature/product that they are offering. Your MobileMe subscription is being replaced by iCloud and Apple did not address how that will be transitioned or what will happen to iDisk and the e-mail addresses.

Actually they did: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4597

Essentially MobileMe lives until June 30 of next year, then it goes away completely and one is forced to sign up for iCloud (or not).

 

[MacAddict1978]

Cap.

I honestly call this DOA because we have to pay a $25 a year label tax. Compared to Google Music same 20k worth of songs is 100% free. Apple we have to pay $25 a year to have access to the same songs we already paid for.

Google isn't upgrading 20K worth of songs either... it would cost you $25 in bandwith overage charges from your ISP to upload the 20K songs, and months of your life.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

1) You HAVE TO download it and it is DRM-free, so I assume the logical answer is "YES".
2) You will be cancelling the matching service but already have a copy of the DRM-free file, so the logical answer is "YES, you get to keep the "upgraded version".

Disclaimer: I'm just answering based on how it sounds like it will work...

I can't imagine that THIS can be right regardless of how it sounds. I can't imagine the pirates basically legitimizing their entire libraries (potentially thousands or tens of thousands of songs) for as little as a one-time fee of $24.99.

I believe iTunes match must be streaming non-iTunes-purchased content. Else media "amnesty" for only $24.99 is almost like proof that crime does pay. Pay it once, legitimize your whole library, cancel, and all that pirated content is now DRM free legit forever. I just can NOT believe that that is how it is. We'll all learn soon enough when official word starts coming out about all the questions not answered today.

 

[sectime]

Getting 6 million or 13 million songs is a bit expensive and hard for that matter. Unless you're a pirate.

The magic is ripping them all to one CD

 

[MacAddict1978]

thats really strange; everyone can now share ripped files and can legalize it afterwards ... fell a bit stupid to bought all songs over the years via iTunes ...

Yeah, don't think the idea to legitimize piracy, but reward those who actually purchased physical CD's. You can make it legitimize priated music, but you need to physically change ALL the meta-data in the info pane for the track to match the legit album just as you would need to do to have iTunes fetch the artwork. If you have an illegal 10,000 songs chances are the formatting is wrong in at least half of them. One wrong character nixes it being found.

I had legit things I ripped that I had to rename to make iTunes give me the artwork for. God bless anyone that will spend that time sorting through the meta data.

 

[Sdevante]

I tried it out on my iPad and all it does is let you download it to your iDevice. It does not let you stream, at least for previously purchased items. I am confident iTunes Match just does the same thing for your non-iTunes library.

 

[MacAddict1978]

Well this sounds pretty good...I have 22,000 songs. However, many of mine are remixes that are definitely not on iTunes. So I would definitely have to think about what's available before I sign up...Apple should allow iTunes to scan all my stuff beforehand and give me a report of what's missing before I fork over the $25.

But I would really like to see the proof that the iCloud can truly stream over cell phone technology for say 60+ minutes at a time. For example, I would like to plop my iPhone into a boombox at a friend's pool and listen to tunes over the cell network for several hours.

Also, how will the cell carriers like folks streaming 256k mp3s over their network for use cases like mine? Data plans gonna change soon?

It might do that. The fee is only for non-iTunes purchased music. So iTunes will scan your library anyway, and I'm sure they'd probably tell you some statistic to encourage you to pay the fee.

 

[likemyorbs]

I don't get it. What's the big difference with this and wireless syncing?

 

[rWally]

I don't get it. What's the big difference with this and wireless syncing?

Wireless syncing is pretty much how it is now but you do it over your home network instead of over a USB cable. You're still syncing with your computer, not the cloud.

iCloud allows you to sync content via the cloud to all your devices no matter where you're at. It also pushes your synced content to other devices so it updates automatically without you needing to do anything.

 

[cualexander]

I'm pretty happy with Audiogalaxy right now. It scans my whole itunes library and offers it up to streaming to any device I have the Audiogalaxy app on, and it's free. It doesn't do protected songs, but that's a small percentage of my overall library. So my own cloud for free vs Apple giving me a cloud for $25/year... hmmm. I already have 5mbps upstream so I have all my videos, photos, songs, etc in my personal cloud as is. I also have 50mbps downstream so I remotely download stuff, it imports into my library and its in my cloud a few minutes later. Granted, I'm paying for all the bandwidth, but the system works pretty well as is. Audiogalaxy and Plex are all that's needed. And actually Plex will do music too, but I don't have it imported into there.

 

[likemyorbs]

Wireless syncing is pretty much how it is now but you do it over your home network instead of over a USB cable. You're still syncing with your computer, not the cloud.

iCloud allows you to sync content via the cloud to all your devices no matter where you're at. It also pushes your synced content to other devices so it updates automatically without you needing to do anything.

But if i download most of my music on my computer, would this make any sense for me to buy since i can quickly sync it anyway?

 

[Blu-Ray]

I can't imagine that THIS can be right regardless of how it sounds. I can't imagine the pirates basically legitimizing their entire libraries (potentially thousands or tens of thousands of songs) for as little as a one-time fee of $24.99.

I believe iTunes match must be streaming non-iTunes-purchased content. Else media "amnesty" for only $24.99 is almost like proof that crime does pay. Pay it once, legitimize your whole library, cancel, and all that pirated content is now DRM free legit forever. I just can NOT believe that that is how it is. We'll all learn soon enough when official word starts coming out about all the questions not answered today.

LINK (you are downloading the DRM-free music files):

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

UNLESS of course, this ("plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality") means "streaming".

 

[rWally]

But if i download most of my music on my computer, would this make any sense for me to buy since i can quickly sync it anyway?

If you download all your music on your computer and immediately sync to your phone then it doesn't make much sense to buy the service.

 

[tbrinkma]

And they are downloaded to the phone, not streamed, correct?

Seems like people are mistakenly thinking it is streaming based on the rumors and not paying attention to what was actually announced.

Yep. There's just as many people who seem to think that streaming somehow involves something other than downloading the data to the device you want to use to use/view/listen.

Here's a hint for those people. Progressive download (the ability to start viewing/listening to the video/audio before it's completely downloaded) beats true streaming in nearly every way shape and form. If you're actually *streaming* data, you only have local access to whatever is currently in the buffer at the moment. You want to rewind past the beginning of the buffer? You'll have to re-download that data into the buffer.

There's *one* feature that streaming offers that downloading doesn't. The ability to jump into the stream in the middle without downloading what came before that point first. That's nice when you're jumping onto "internet radio", or watching a live video stream, but it's almost certainly not the normal use-case for playing something from your own music library.

 

[idd]

I tried it out on my iPad and all it does is let you download it to your iDevice. It does not let you stream, at least for previously purchased items. I am confident iTunes Match just does the same thing for your non-iTunes library.

In iTunes on my iPhone 4, it does let you stream 90 seconds of the song if you click on an artist, and then the album, and then the track name. You can only stream one song at a time and if you click on any thing else the streaming stops. Exactly how it works in iTunes on the computer.

There is no option in the iPod app to listen to music that's not already stored on the phone.

So it seems that you open iTunes, download your music from the cloud, then listen to it from the iPod app. No streaming.

 

[Ducky21]

256 kbps? meh.

i keep v0 files for a reason

 

[gnasher729]

So I have almost 50,000 songs. Mostly ripped from my own CD collection. Do I have to pay in multiples of 24.99 per year? Or was that just an example? Limitless for 24.99?

If you spent maybe $40,000 on CDs, you can probably afford 3 x $24.99 per year.
(Someone else found: Limit 25,000 songs that are not purchased on iTMS).

So, if I understand this correctly, it will cost me $25/yr to store the matching songs from my ripped CD's on the cloud?

They are not actually stored. Apple has about 18 million songs, so if you have 10,000 songs that are matched, all that is stored is "BigDukeSix owns songs #4,567, #12,389, #15,000,000" and so on. For $25/yr you get unlimited downloads of all these songs in 256 KBit AAC quality to all your devices.

I already have 5mbps upstream so I have all my videos, photos, songs, etc in my personal cloud as is. I also have 50mbps downstream so I remotely download stuff, it imports into my library and its in my cloud a few minutes later.

When I read your post, I thought of the "Lion" thread where people are pulling their hair how it is impossible for them to download the 4 GB "Lion" installer...

It might do that. The fee is only for non-iTunes purchased music. So iTunes will scan your library anyway, and I'm sure they'd probably tell you some statistic to encourage you to pay the fee.

Excellent idea. And I _really_ want to know how many of my old LPs the scanner recognizes.

To get up to 25,000 songs, generally, but not in all cases, there's piracy involved.

Shortly after the iTunes Store was opened, when 10 million songs sold was huge news, Steve Jobs said on stage that someone had bought over 36,000 songs on the store. Must have taken days just to click on the "Buy this song" button!

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

LINK (you are downloading the DRM-free music files):

Here's exactly what it says about non-iTunes-purchased content on Apple's site...

iTunes Match
If you want all the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud for music you haven’t purchased from iTunes, iTunes Match is the perfect solution. It lets you store your entire collection, including music you’ve ripped from CDs or purchased somewhere other than iTunes. For just $24.99 a year.2

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

Note, you have to look elsewhere on that page to see info about downloading DRM-free files back to our devices, but that might be info solely in the context of iTunes-purchased songs. I still think it's a stream-only option for iTunes Match media. I think we're reaching to believe that the pirates are going to legitimize their entire collections for as little as a one-time fee of $24.99. The only counter to my belief that I read in the above is the "for you to listen to anytime, on any device" benefit which would not be possible in a stream-only situation if you had no Internet access. However, I believe Apple described the iDevices as the "whole Internet in your pocket" when, in fact, all the many pieces of the Internet that are coded with Flash are not included.

Someone needs to find a definitive statement from Apple that says iTunes Match content is going to be able to be downloaded and thus permanently stored in our local iTunes libraries. The referenced link above doesn't do it (IMO).

 

[Eric S.]

If you download all your music on your computer and immediately sync to your phone then it doesn't make much sense to buy the service.

That's the way I see it. The question is, will future versions of iTunes continue to allow users to do manual syncing or will they force everything to go through iCloud? I can see that happening eventually if not right off.

 

[redfirebird08]

Yep. There's just as many people who seem to think that streaming somehow involves something other than downloading the data to the device you want to use to use/view/listen.

Here's a hint for those people. Progressive download (the ability to start viewing/listening to the video/audio before it's completely downloaded) beats true streaming in nearly every way shape and form. If you're actually *streaming* data, you only have local access to whatever is currently in the buffer at the moment. You want to rewind past the beginning of the buffer? You'll have to re-download that data into the buffer.

There's *one* feature that streaming offers that downloading doesn't. The ability to jump into the stream in the middle without downloading what came before that point first. That's nice when you're jumping onto "internet radio", or watching a live video stream, but it's almost certainly not the normal use-case for playing something from your own music library.

Streaming also allows access to more music on a storage device that can't actually handle that much data, such as a 64 gig iPod when you have 80 gigs of music. Just an example. The idea of paying $25 per year to back up 25,000 songs in your library sounds cool, except for the privacy issue. Beyond that, downloading an entire file to the device isn't any different than sticking it on the device through USB. It still leaves you dealing with flash memory devices that can only hold so much data.

 

[rWally]

Here's exactly what it says about non-iTunes-purchased content on Apple's site...

iTunes Match
If you want all the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud for music you haven’t purchased from iTunes, iTunes Match is the perfect solution. It lets you store your entire collection, including music you’ve ripped from CDs or purchased somewhere other than iTunes. For just $24.99 a year.2

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

Note, you have to look elsewhere on that page to see info about downloading DRM-free files back to our devices, but that might be info solely in the context of iTunes-purchased songs. I still think it's a stream-only option for iTunes Match media. I think we're reaching to believe that the pirates are going to legitimize their entire collections for as little as a one-time fee of $24.99.

It doesn't legitimize anything. Once someone has pirated a song the file itself is just as legitimate as a song from itunes. You can't go back and trace whether a song is pirated. The 320kbps MP3 someone gets off a torrent site is just as legitimate as the 256 AAC file you get from iTunes in terms of validity. The only thing that isn't legitimate is the means by which you got it. Simply trading one file for another doesn't change the fact that the original file wasn't obtained legally.

What I'm saying is that once someone has a song in their possession there's no way to tell anyway so why would someone go through the trouble to 'legitimize' their collection?

 

[Blu-Ray]

Here's exactly what it says about non-iTunes-purchased content on Apple's site...

iTunes Match
If you want all the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud for music you haven’t purchased from iTunes, iTunes Match is the perfect solution. It lets you store your entire collection, including music you’ve ripped from CDs or purchased somewhere other than iTunes. For just $24.99 a year.2

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

Note, you have to look elsewhere on that page to see info about downloading DRM-free files back to our devices, but that might be info solely in the context of iTunes-purchased songs. I still think it's a stream-only option for iTunes Match media. I think we're reaching to believe that the pirates are going to legitimize their entire collections for as little as a one-time fee of $24.99. The only counter to my belief that I read in the above is the "for you to listen to anytime, on any device" which would not be possible in a stream-only situation if you had no Internet access. However, I believe Apple described the iDevices as the "whole Internet in your pocket" when, in fact, all the many pieces of the Internet that are coded with Flash are not included.

Someone needs to find a definitive statement from Apple that says iTunes Match content is going to be able to be downloaded and thus permanently stored in our local iTunes libraries. The referenced link above doesn't do it (IMO).

True, but this part:

listen to anytime, on any device

What if I don't have cellular or wifi access? I can't listen to that music.

 

[JAT]

US only? Apple doesn't seem to care much about other countries if they don't even mention such relevant facts in their keynote.

This is the answer in the next quote. Music rights are different in every country.

God only knows how Apple managed to persuade record labels to do this.

Also knowing Google the beta will be years long. Just like Gmail was in "beta" for years.

"was"??

In terms of cost per song it is about 240 times cheaper. I'm just saying at $25 you are already paying over a quarter of the cost and getting no new music whatsoever. For 4 times the cost you get better than 1000 times the music.

You don't "get" more music from a larger library, you get better choice. You can't monetize choice by simply dividing by the total. If every song was 3.5 minutes long, you can listen to 150,000 songs per year, if you don't sleep or work or anything else to interfere with the listening. (you can sleep every Feb 29th, I ignored those in my calc) So, assuming you don't sleep or work, it would take you 40 years to get the benefit you claim. If you do sleep and work, 120 years. Or, you could just worry about the music you'll actually have time to listen to instead of mythical stuff.

I anticipate numerous glitches, if their track record on supplying album cover art for lesser known albums is any guide.

Or well known albums.

 

[lilo777]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

So Lala for 25 bucks a year? I am ok with that.

As I understand, it's Lala without streaming (i.e. not Lala at all).

 

[hpman247]

This is the way it is said to work. Whether it changes or not, who knows. Right now it seems too good to be true IMO. Well minus the streaming capabilities, which would be nice, but to be honest, I really do not need. My library is 125GB and it fits on my iPod Classic just fine.

Anyways, as stated it does not stream. Music in your library is scanned (much like scanning for Genius,maybe), and the metadata that it matches is then released to the cloud whereby it DOES NOT upload the scanned and matched media, but uses the data collected to allow access to those songs on the cloud. It’s much like renting a movie on iTunes; once it is paid for, you are allowed to watch it. In this scenario, once you have paid for iTunes Match and scanned your library, those matched songs will then be available to you on the cloud much like the movie you rented is made available to you.
Any songs that are not matched will be uploaded. I am sure you have a choice as to whether said to upload said song(s) or not. Many people are asking questions about the most basic of processes. I’m sure Apple is not going to leave out such core functionalities. What then would be the point in the service?

The question remains, what happens to all of your shared, downloaded, and pirated music? I don’t believe it matters. At least not from what we have heard thus far. It seems that anything in our library that can be matched will be available on the cloud. I’ll get back to this…

It also seems that once our yearly subscription is up we would lose the ability to download those songs from the cloud. Thus, we would have to purchase it again a year from now to maintain access. That does not however take away from the fact that we could sign up, legitimize all of our music, download the now legal copies in iTunes Plus quality, and a year from now not renew. The music that is downloaded from the cloud is DRM free, therefore once it is on a device it is yours forever.

To the cloud. It’s my understanding that in iOS5, the cloud will just work. It’s supposed to be simple. All of our matched and uploaded iTunes music will be there available to download on any of our devices --iPads, iPods, Macbooks, PCs, etc. Everything is just there. That’s what cloud computing is. If for instance, we download the new Lady Gaga song on our PC or Macbook, by the time the download has completed on that device it is ready on our iPad or iPod, assuming we purchased it from the iTunes store. If we purchased or downloaded illegally from another venue, I assume that iTunes will have to be ‘scanned’ for new music, but will then be available on iCloud.

Content is not necessarily physically downloaded to the device, but it is ready to be downloaded at the click of a button should you so choose to do so. Again, this is my understanding. You can however choose to have it automatically downloaded. It seems that both options will be available.

Finally, this is the one thing that I do not understand. Say a new Bruno Mars song is played on American Idol. It becomes all the rage. Many people will download it on iTunes, but what about those of us with iTunes Match service. For us, we could go download a version off of Mediafire or some other file sharing service, torrent, etc, have iTunes scan our library, it finds the song, then the song is available for us to download in iTunes Plus quality on the cloud. So technically we are getting the song for nearly nothing, that many others are paying $1.29 for.

How can they stop the general public from doing this? Will people realize they can do this? Or does it even matter? Would those people who are going to buy it, buy it anyway, and those that are going to pirate, pirate anyway? Is this the conclusion that Apple come to, and $omehow got the record companies on board with this? That is my main question concerning this service, because what we know of it thus far leads me to believe that it can be abused quite easily, but at the end of the day the record companies are getting some money now, for those of us that will sign up (and I think many will) where in the past they were getting nothing,