Little and Big Music Disagree On 'iTunes Match'

[MacRumors]

iTunes Match was Steve Jobs' "One More Thing at WWDC this year. It allows users to get the same backup and "download anywhere" benefits from legitimate iTunes purchases as well as any other music they might have, regardless of where it was acquired. Or, as All Things Digital's Peter Kafka put it:

Apple will take the songs you've stolen, and turn them into legit files, with big music's blessing.

Big music might have agreed to Apple's pirate amnesty scheme, but little music may not fall in line quite so quietly.

​

Rob Sevier, owner of Chicago-based Numero Group -- a tiny record label that specializes in old Soul music -- thinks iTunes Match is a raw deal. In a chat with Ars Technica's Chris Foresman, Sevier explained the effect of piracy on a small record label like Numero.

[M]any of Numero's releases sell in the range of about 10,000 copies total, including physical and digital formats. Yet, the label has found copies of tracks from its albums on sharing sites such as MediaFire or RapidShare with download counts that far exceed sales numbers.

"People will rip your album and upload them, and you can see how many people are downloading it," Sevier explained. "And in some cases people are downloading our stuff like 80,000 times or more. We have seen, on average, anything from 10 to 20 times more downloads than legitimate sales."

"There's no way that we're not going to see matching that exceeds what we're selling legitimately," Sevier said.

This is nothing new. Six years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that Grokster and StreamCast "induced users to violate copyrights and chose not to take the simple steps available to prevent it." The Economist, writing about the case in 2005, noted "the challenge for content providers is to use new technology to create value for customers, and to make those who use content illegally feel bad about it."

If, as Sevier claims, Match is bad for the artist and the record company, then it must be good for the consumer. Sevier, for one, thinks so:

[iTunes Match is] brilliant. I will definitely use the free version since I'll be able to access all of the stuff I've bought from iTunes and not have to permanently store it all on my computer.

But clearly some of the big record execs like it too. Labels hope iTunes Match will supply them with three important things: Some amount of revenue for pirated music is better than nothing; labels will get more feedback about the types of music that consumers are listening to; and, they hope, iTunes Match will get customers into the habit of paying for music again -- at least in a subscription form.

Article Link: Little and Big Music Disagree On 'iTunes Match'

 

[trainwrecka]

Let's not forget about the legit users.

Remember a lot of us were alive during the transition from CDs to iTunes. That means a lot of us have thousands of songs purchased legally imported into iTunes. It also means people are covered if they bought them from an alternative service like Amazon. People are going to steal regardless. This is a big plus for the honest folk out there.

 

[Hirth]

The argument is trotted out again that "pirated downloads were X times higher than legitimate sales", with the implication being that if there were no piracy, then our sales would have been X (or some significant fraction thereof) times higher. There is no rational way to estimate this. If there were no piracy, sales might have been X times higher; sales might not have been any higher at all. There is no way to tell. There is no way to perform the experiment to find out, either. Also what about people who have NO pirated music on their computers. Should they be punished (by having to buy a fresh digital copy of music they already own) because of some people who do not respect copyright?

 

[Michael Scrip]

Apple will take the songs you've stolen, and turn them into legit files, with big music's blessing.

It really sounds too good to be true... that you can have Apple scan your "less-than-legal" music downloads and let you have fresh clean copies of those songs sent to your iDevices.

On the other hand... you're paying for that service... and I bet a big portion of that fee is given to the record labels.

The record labels currently get ZERO dollars if you just sync those illegal songs with a USB cable... so maybe this is their way of trying to get something...

 

[adambadamh]

Though I thought Steve said that you got DRM free tracks after you used Match. That doesn't really bode well for people sticking around to keep subscribing. It seems to me that you can clean up your library then pack up shop.

 

[MacPro23]

Though I thought Steve said that you got DRM free tracks after you used Match. That doesn't really bode well for people sticking around to keep subscribing. It seems to me that you can clean up your library then pack up shop.

But the legit purpose of iTunes Match is have a backup of all your music in the cloud, and if you don't renew your service you will no longer have access.

 

[SvP]

iTunes won't make any files legal; if you don't have an original copy or legitimate download, you don't have a legal file.

Thru itunes you will have a better version of an illegally obtained file, simply.

This has 0 effect on sales!

Music/movie industry needs to het their act together and make things GLOBAL, easy, and not too expensive.

 

[AmpSkillz]

"People will rip your album and upload them, and you can see how many people are downloading it," Sevier explained. "And in some cases people are downloading our stuff like 80,000 times or more. We have seen, on average, anything from 10 to 20 times more downloads than legitimate sales."

"There's no way that we're not going to see matching that exceeds what we're selling legitimately"

so.... people download free stuff more than stuff you have to pay for

this Rob Sevier guy is a freaking genius

just because people are willing to download something for free does not mean they would have paid for it

its kind of like apps in the app store, I try free crap all the time but that does not mean I would have paid for it if they decided to charge for it

when it comes to paid apps i am fairly selective

 

[Sardonick007]

Arrogant pricks. Not all non-iTunes music is stolen. I've got over 500 CD's full of music that I have ripped myself. I own them. Screw you record labels.

 

[blybug]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

I was under the impression that iTunes Match would only stream the high quality non-iTunes files it matched in your library. Kind of like Pandora but with your own music database. I'd be very surprised if you get to actually download and keep a local copy...and pretty sure Steve never explicitly said this.

In fact, the streaming model would get Apple $24.99/yr and also subtly entice users to gradually replace their non-iTunes content with purchased versions. Think about it.

 

[acslater017]

iTunes won't make any files legal; if you don't have an original copy or legitimate download, you don't have a legal file.

Thru itunes you will have a better version of an illegally obtained file, simply.

This has 0 effect on sales!

I sympathize with small record labels. But iTunes, of all forces in the tech world, has been a net benefit to the music industry. iTunes brought legit digital music to the mainstream.

People will pirate media or they won't. The fact that they can sync their files via iCloud does not provide an incentive or method to enable piracy.

 

[DougFNJ]

Great logic......treat me like the criminal I'm not, while the real criminals continue to do what they do regardless of what I do legitimately.

I hate judgmental corporate jackasses that hold me down to the same standards as common criminals.

 

[acslater017]

Arrogant pricks. Not all non-iTunes music is stolen. I've got over 500 CD's full of music that I have ripped myself. I own them. Screw you record labels.

I do agree that iTunes is not really the problem here for small music labels. However, I think it's more a case of them being the victims of a crime and lashing out at the wrong target more than them being "arrogant pricks" . I don't know any businessperson who likes to watch 10x or 20x copies of their product go out for free.

 

[bettaboy123]

Quality

My only problem is that I converted all of my music to 320kbps MP3 files, so my quality will suffer. I don't know that I wanna do this whole iTunes Match thing just because of the quality issue. Does anyone know if there is a way that I can keep the quality of my music and still reap the benefits of iTunes Match?

 

[Michael Scrip]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

I was under the impression that iTunes Match would only stream the high quality non-iTunes files it matched in your library. Kind of like Pandora but with your own music database. I'd be very surprised if you get to actually download and keep a local copy...and pretty sure Steve never explicitly said this.

There is no streaming with iCloud and iTunes Match... it's purely a syncing solution.

Yes... you will be able to download... the whole point is to make sure all your iDevices have the same stuff on them... locally.

 

[Surreal]

This is an unfortunate situation. There is no great way to verify the origin of the file. Digital media is difficult. That is all.

 

[mconk]

I posted this comment om the Labels website, but also wanted to post here to get some feedback from you guys to see how their decision makes ANY sense at all...

Explain how this makes ANY sense at all? Anyone who had obtained music from your label, illegally (maybe they bought a cd from one of your artists, and decided to download a copy rather than rip their cd for the simple ease of use) is presented with an opportunity to PURCHASE the song, while syncing to iCloud...you guys provide absolutely zero logic as to why you've opted out of this program, and clearly do not understand the concept behind this program. Until this day I've never heard of you, and probably never will again. Nice job riding the short media blitz...you will continue to lose money to digital downloads, when you could have gained back some of your losses with this program.

 

[Santabean2000]

The music industry (and esp the movie industry) have to accept that the days of charging exorbitant amounts of money for their products are OVER!

Technology giveth and now taketh away, (esp for the blood-sucking middle men, and not the creative folk). Get over it. Losers.

 

[fluffylion]

In the end, this is likely just an oversight on Apples project planning, and is likely to be rectified quickly before release.

Funny pirates do spend crazy amount of money to pirate stuff. Many spend much more on internet usage per month to have a higher quota to download stuff. So many make copies of the box covers, CD covers and print them out to make it look like an original product for themselves.

Then again, people with that mentality dont really do much in their life. So I guess their boring existence is their penalty

 

[skellener]

Not sure who iTunes for iCloud is really for. Pirates won't pay even the $24.99. They're PIRATES!!! People with legit files don't need it either. They have their songs already. It also doesn't stream any tracks. So who is going to use this service?

 

[blybug]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

I was under the impression that iTunes Match would only stream the high quality non-iTunes files it matched in your library. Kind of like Pandora but with your own music database. I'd be very surprised if you get to actually download and keep a local copy...and pretty sure Steve never explicitly said this.

There is no streaming with iCloud and iTunes Match... it's purely a syncing solution.

Yes... you will be able to download... the whole point is to make sure all your iDevices have the same stuff on them... locally.

Hmmmm...I wouldn't be so sure about that. The keynote did not imply that to me, and look how carefully the description here has been worded:

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

Apple will make it seamless, but there's 3 kinds of songs:

(1) Purchased on iTunes with local copy on your device, and if not, available to download. No dent in your 5GB iCloud. This is already working. Very nice.

(2) Obtained elsewhere but iTunes Matched. Can stream from the iCloud as long as you pay your subscription. No dent in your 5GB storage. It's Pandora with your database playing Apple's copy of the track. This is why this entire article and thread is a non-issue.

(3) No match for your song. Uploads your file to iCloud, counts against your 5GB, available to download to any device.

 

[Elijahg]

There is a simple fact most record labels don't seem to realise. Yes the label may be seeing thousands of illegal downloads on filesharing sites, but not all of those people would have purchased the song if it wasn't available for free.

If a song's available at no cost, whether it's legal or not, many people will download it to have a quick listen. If they had to pay for the song, they just wouldn't bother listening to it at all. No lost sale for the label, as there was never any intention of buying it anyway. I've downloaded songs from the iTunes 12 Days of Christmas promo, but I'd have absolutely no intention of buying them if they weren't free.

 

[MrSmith]

(2) Obtained elsewhere but iTunes Matched. Can stream from the iCloud as long as you pay your subscription. No dent in your 5GB storage. It's Pandora with your database playing Apple's copy of the track. This is why this entire article and thread is a non-issue.

(3) No match for your song. Uploads your file to iCloud, counts against your 5GB, available to download to any device.

Presumably (3) will happen by default if I don't want to pay. I mean, unless I'm an audiophile, the better option if I want to sync my tracks on multiple machines is for my tracks to not be iTunes matched. I'd rather use up my free 5GB than pay...

 

[Mad Mac Maniac]

anyone think that iTunes match opens Apple up to the future possibility of a "zune pass" type subscription?

Would you pay $15 a month to have access to ALL 18 million songs in iTunes? Download as many as you want and they are automatically synced through iCloud. Of course there would have to be a way to tag the songs so that when you end your subscription they go away. I could see that being hacked pretty easily though...

 

[sohelpme]

... Labels hope iTunes Match will supply them with three important things: Some amount of revenue for pirated music is better than nothing; labels will get more feedback about the types of music that consumers are listening to; and, they hope, iTunes Match will get customers into the habit of paying for music again -- at least in a subscription form.

The big labels love iTunes Match because it gets them a whack of cash that they can fritter away on coke and whores. Approximately 0% of that money will go to performers or songwriters.