Apple Determines iTunes Match Royalties By Counting How Many Times A Song is Accessed

[gnasher729]

My collection is several TB of Classical music primarily sourced from vinyl, + a couple TB primarily of archival live & studio recordings not yet officially released from Zeppelin, Floyd, Radiohead, Grandaddy etc I rcvd from doing work in the biz. + about 50gig of my old cd collection poorly ripped a decade ago. I'm confused as to what would happen if I ran iTunes Match.

Would I upload all kinds of vinyl recordings so everyone else who eventually tried to match those albums from CDs would get my poppy clicky transfers? Would all the tracks I agreed not to share become public record with all my incriminating metadata in them? Would ITM replace my live tracks with studio versions it recognized?

Otherwise, much of my old cd-rips collection could benefit from an upgrade by now. Just a little nervous. Can't take any chances. Probably have to divide up separate libraries...

1. This has all been discussed ages ago.

2. If you have more than 25,000 songs in your library that were not purchased from Apple, then iTunes Match will not even look at your library.

3. iTunes Match _only_ matches your songs against music that is on Apple's store. When you or anybody else downloads music, you get either the 256 KBit AAC version from Apple's store, or the exact version that the person uploaded themselves, but never, ever the music that someone else uploaded.

One more thing I was wondering... What happens to the songs that are uploaded to iTunes Match, do they become property of Apple so they can be sold in the iTunes Store? Because that would be a smart (and nasty) way of expanding the iTunes Store content.

Apple doesn't have the copyright, and no license from the copyright holder. And plenty of money to be sued for. So that isn't going to happen.

 

[kiljoy616]

Where does Apple get the money to pay for copyright holders? It's only $25 a year.

Very, Very micro payments.

 

[SirHaakon]

At $25 a year only big labels have a chance to make money from this. I probably will listen to a few hundred songs from a hundred different artists over the course of the year. You're talking pennies to artists with little more for smaller labels.

Only big labels get paid twice. You still have to buy the music in the first place, so every artist gets their original cut - big or small.

 

[kiljoy616]

Thanks MR for posting this. I was on the fence about match but now there is no way in hell I would sign up. The suits at the record co's and Apple can suck it. Plenty of excellent independent options out there for good musicians to get paid without the heavy hand of corporate america fleecing you.

You missed the point, Corp. America is always going to be on top that just how it works. Glad to see the artist are getting at least something out of this, not like most artist are going to make the kind of money we think they should.

 

[gnasher729]

It's not theft because (A) you didn't steal it, you made a copy of it and took the copy, they still have the original, and (B) you wouldn't have spent money on it, so either way they don't get paid - this is obviously not always the case but the vast majority of time it is. A typical new music CD has about 100 MB, maybe less, and costs $20, so even just 10 GB would cost $2,000. How many paying customers spend anywhere close to $2,000 on music?

It's not theft but copyright infringement. Different thing, just as illegal. Different countries have different language for the definition of theft; in German law theft is "taking something away that isn't rightfully yours _in order to enrich yourself_" while in US law it is "taking something away that isn't rightfully yours _in order to deprive the rightful owner_", so the fact that the rightful owner still has the object doesn't matter in German law. There are plenty of other things that are not theft, like fraud and embezzlement, that are just as bad. So that self-serving argument of yours is a total loser.

Your second argument is just as bad. First, a new music CD is about 700 MB. Second, music CDs come at all kinds of prices, but music on iTunes or at Amazon does _not_ cost $20 per album, nowhere near. Third, many paying customers have spent a lot, lot more than $2,000 on music. At least when we're talking about adults.

But in the end, if you want to benefit from people's hard work without paying, you are just a leech. (Moderators: Look up the dictionary definition of leech). If you want to be a leech, that's up to you. Just don't complain if you are treated like one. The "I wouldn't have paid for it" argument may be acceptable if you are one of the "collectors" who just have an urge to collect stuff and never listen to it, like someone who downloads 50,000 songs illegally just to brag that they have 50,000 songs. As soon as you listen to the music, well, if you didn't pay for it, then don't listen to it.

 

[rlhamil]

Ha ! So if someone puts a pirated album up on iTunes Match that artist gets paid.

Smart move. Now I understand how Apple was able to get the labels to go along with this.

...but what the RIAA and every darn moneygrubber imaginable (NOT that I begrudge writers or artists, but some of the others are parasites) always wanted is PAY-PER-PLAY, and that's what they get with this.

No thanks...I can stream my collection back to myself without Apple's help.

Edit add: what the recording industry HAS to recognize is that in an age of digital distribution (where just incidentally NO copy-protect will really solve the problem), they have got to cut costs to the bone...like HALF what they are now. Dump physical media (but provide an option of lossless compression), learn how to spend MUCH less on promotion. And make purchasing at those low prices so much easier than pirating that few will bother. Eventually, artists and writers should control the distribution and not the other way around.

 

[justperry]

As I understand it, they use some kind of "fingerprinting" technology to identify the song. Think of a cryptographic digest like MD5 or SHA-1, but designed for audio. They generate a fingerprint for every track you didn't purchase from the iTunes store. Then they upload the list of fingerprints to an Apple server, which compares them against tracks in Apple's servers.

If a song's fingerprint matches a song on Apple's server, then the file on the Apple server is available to download to other devices. If no match is found, then your file is uploaded (with high bit-rate files being transcoded to 256K AAC), allowing your devices to download the song itself.

Conceptually, this isn't anything novel. In practice, it's a big deal. An algorithm to accurately fingerprint songs that is also fuzzy enough to deal with rips from different CDs and songs digitized from vinyl and cassette (which often works, but not as reliably as rips from CD) isn't easy to develop, and requires a level of CPU power that wasn't easily available a few years ago.

I wonder what algorithm they actually are using. I suppose a trivial method might be to just transcode the song down to something extremely small, like a 1Kbps representation. At that bit rate, a song is about 7.5K bytes per minute of music. This would be easy to upload and compare against a database of similarly-transcoded files. The result would sound terrible, but it would still contain more than enough data to clearly recognize and identify the song.

Don't you think it is much easier to first check the the song's Id TAG, if all the Data(Artist-title-time...) is there it already knows which number it is

Is that ability worth $25/yr? For some, it definitely is. Not for others.

Although the iTunes Match is $25/yr it's not the complete picture.
What about your monthly internet connection payment.

Example, if you normally use 2 GB per month for lets say $ 25 but now you stream your music and use 4 GB per month at $40 then I say it's $180 + $25 = $205/Yr

This is just an Example, could be more, could be less, depends on usage.

 

[Cybbe]

But in the end, if you want to benefit from people's hard work without paying, you are just a leech. (Moderators: Look up the dictionary definition of leech). If you want to be a leech, that's up to you. Just don't complain if you are treated like one. The "I wouldn't have paid for it" argument may be acceptable if you are one of the "collectors" who just have an urge to collect stuff and never listen to it, like someone who downloads 50,000 songs illegally just to brag that they have 50,000 songs. As soon as you listen to the music, well, if you didn't pay for it, then don't listen to it.

We are all leeches then. Or do you suggest that there's a living soul who has never benefited in some way or another from other's hard work without a monetary transaction to go with it? Have you paid others for the cumulative human knowledge you have consumed throughout your life? Building upon the greatness of others is exactly how progress is made.

 

[krigsmakten]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Have you ever taken an economics class? Or even a philosophy class for that matter? "Loss of a predicted profit" is just a very poor euphemism for what it really is: a loss. There's nothing that states that a matter must be tangible and present to be lost anyway. The loss of an opportunity, for instance, is no less of a loss than anything else, despite being in the future.

And artists typically "sell" music, meaning their music is obtained via purchase, which means a monetary transaction takes place. If someone obtains music in an "unauthorized" way, as you put it, then the individual obtains the artist's product but the artist *does not* receive the part above known as the "monetary transaction." The money that would be earned had something been done legally is LOST because it was done illegally. Tell me why you're bogus rationale does not apply to virtually everything else then, like sneaking into a movie theater or leaving a restaurant without paying?

I actually have a few econ degrees, and modelling what is going on is not as simple as you seem to think.

First though, if you can't separate walking out of a store with a physical product - without paying - from copying tunes from a friend's CD, then you have a problem with your definitions. You might as well argue that standing next to someone on the subway, reading their newspaper over their shoulder, is also theft. Overbroad definition - not really useful.

The underlying problem is that cost of (re)production is ~zero - and simpletons will cross-compare demand for full price store products, with demand for zero price "copies". Demand for free goods and services is typically infinite. If you steal a $500 ring in the real world, that's grand larceny, if you copy 500 songs - where the cost of production is zero - is this even larceny? Larceny (legal term for theft) declares that the object stolen must have value - and that's what I think is debatable with digital reproductions.

It becomes extremely problematic if copies are defined as having the same value as the physical or exclusive good - remember all those emails we send to people, if you include a redistribution restricted piece of analyst research in an email - you have now committed grand larceny! This definition is silly, we'd all be guilty sooner or later.

 

[krigsmakten]

It's not theft but copyright infringement. Different thing, just as illegal. Different countries have different language for the definition of theft; in German law theft is "taking something away that isn't rightfully yours _in order to enrich yourself_" while in US law it is "taking something away that isn't rightfully yours _in order to deprive the rightful owner_", so the fact that the rightful owner still has the object doesn't matter in German law.

Reading ability is such a sweet thing, don't you think? Germans require that you "enrich yourself" through the activity for it to be theft. I.e. copy and sell. Copy for personal enjoyment doesn't seem to fit this model.

Another example, if I take a photo of a painting in a museum, or some other pretty thing, and print and put this "copy" up on my wall - how does this not qualify as "theft" under your definition? See the problem here?

Do you want to ban cameras next? "Yes officer, here is my photography permit"

In the US, larceny (legal term for theft) requires that the object stolen must have value - which is clearly under debate here.

Pretty clear that current laws are ill-prepared to address zero production cost reproduction issues. And trying to give Hollywood and the big studios preferential treatment will make criminals out of all of us.

 

[jonnysods]

Have to say it. I love iTunes Match!

 

[bugfaceuk]

I still don't see the point in iTunes match. If you've got songs ripped from a CD they must be on your Mac/PC, so just sync your iPad, iPhone and iPod touch once, and the music will be on all devices. Then continue to use the iTunes store.

I don't know why people are down voting this. I think it reflects the thoughts of many and is clearly a perfectly valid view point. There is of course a rider... iTunes Match provides more than just "letting you listen to your library"... and those that are saying "why would I pay for songs I already own" are either missing or not valuing the additional functionality. If they don't value it, I think that's completely fine and they shouldn't pay for iTunes Match...

Personally being able to play any music on my iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or Mac regardless of whether or not I am on the machine (or that machine is on the same network) that has my iTunes library is just killer (in a good way), and I love it. Playlists also update "over the air"... and I love that too. For me the real real value is "Your music, without syncing or connection to your main mac, on all your devices". That artists I like enough to listen to get some extra dough... based on my actual listening patterns... is "nice to know".

So... I'm very comfortable with people who don't value the above, as long as they recognise it does have value for some.

 

[Dimwhit]

those that are saying "why would I pay for songs I already own" are either missing or not valuing the additional functionality.

It's like people who pay for a service like Dropbox (I know, it's free, but not if you want use more than the 2GB of free storage) complaining about having to pay extra money for documents they already own.

No, it's not. You're paying an annual fee for a service that stores everything in the cloud and allows you access to it on various other devices. Much like a service such as Dropbox does for your files. And iTunes Match offers additional benefits, as well (such as getting access to higher quality files than you may have had before).

So no, you're not paying more money for music you already own. If that's what you think, move along. It's obviously not something you are interested in or care about.

 

[ncaissie]

I still don't see the point in iTunes match. If you've got songs ripped from a CD they must be on your Mac/PC, so just sync your iPad, iPhone and iPod touch once, and the music will be on all devices. Then continue to use the iTunes store.

exactly. when you buy a new song it automatically downloads to your other devices doesn't it? The only incentive is to upgrade you songs quality. (Only if they have it or can figure out what the song is)

 

[bugfaceuk]

It's like people who pay for a service like Dropbox (I know, it's free, but not if you want use more than the 2GB of free storage) complaining about having to pay extra money for documents they already own.

No, it's not. You're paying an annual fee for a service that stores everything in the cloud and allows you access to it on various other devices.

I think that's a really nice analogy.

 

[DudeDad]

Someone should tell him it's not called iMatch.

Great, now you will tell me that my touch screen iPod is not called the iTouch....

 

[morespce54]

Where does Apple get the money to pay for copyright holders? It's only $25 a year.

See above...

[...]Price and other record industry execs are thrilled with the iTunes Match service, and by extension, Apple. Not only are artists finally getting paid something for pirated music, but for legitimate song purchases they are getting paid twice. If a listener purchases a CD, rips it to their computer, and then uploads it to iTunes Match, the record company books revenue for both the purchase and the small cut they receive from iTunes Match.[...]

And...

"A person has a song on her computer hard drive. She clicks on the song and plays it. No one is getting paid."

Uh, didn't they already get paid if I purchase the music on CD or Mp3?

See above...

Of course they like getting paid twice. Why not make customers pay 3 or 4 times?

Breaking news... Those majors are greedy you know...
Vinyl then 8 Tracks then K7 then CD then MP3/ACC...
Boy, how many times did I purchased those songs (admittedly, I skipped the 8 Tracks )

----------

exactly. when you buy a new song it automatically downloads to your other devices doesn't it? The only incentive is to upgrade you songs quality. (Only if they have it or can figure out what the song is)

Actually, another incentive would be to be able to download *any* of your songs on *any* iDevices *without* syncin' them to your computer first.

I'm thinking of my iPod (64GB) and iPhone (16GB). Of course I can't sync all my songs on my iPhone. Therefore, having the ability to download *any* of my (non-itunes purchased) songs on my iPhone when I fell like it is a nice feature.


Although, I'm not using iTunes Match (yet)...

 

[ladymacintosh]

Apple's "business model" of a 70/30 split was around before spotify was an app on the appstore.

True, but Spotify has only been in the US for less than a year. Spotify has been in other parts of the world for a long time.

 

[baleensavage]

Wow, and people wonder why musicians are dropping music labels at every turn. Apple gets more from each download than the songwriter and the musician only gets what the label decides to give them from their cut. What a scam. In a fair world it would be more like the artist gets 70% and everyone else has to fight over the rest.

As for iTunes match, in theory it's a great concept, but having used it for a few months now, I can honestly say it is worst product that I have ever gotten from Apple (and I've been using Apple since the Mac Plus). They should have taken another year to release it before they worked the bugs out and cleaned up how it works.

First, it is by far the biggest bandwidth hog of any upload service and it's slow, slow, slow. Dropbox which doesn't even have their own servers and their service uploads way faster and doesn't take my internet connection down to a crawl when it does. And my iPod itself is completely sluggish any time I do anything with match. There's no reason a simple background download should slow the entire device to a snail's pace.

The worst part though is the interface. You have to go to System prefs on the iPod to turn viewing of all music off and even then, it still shows everything in coverflow. You should be able to toggle right in the music app whether you are showing downloaded or iCloud items and showing everything in coverflow is just ridiculous and has totally killed coverflow for me.

It was worth $25 to upgrade a bunch of crappy MP3s and old iTunes purchases I had, but if it wasn't for that, then I'd be requesting a refund. It seems to me that iTunes match is a perfect service for getting more money into the record labels and Apple's pockets and that's about it.

 

[Tinmania]

So what stops an artist from redownloading their own tracks multiple times after deleting it. Do they keep getting them self paid?

Hopefully an IQ above room temperature would stop an artist from being so foolish. Let's see, pay $25 upfront for the chance to, possibly, get back $17.50--if that--over the next year or two in micro-payments. Brilliant way to make money!




Michael

----------

But it plays almost instantly. You mean without downloading it? I actually don't mind that. I prefer to download my running lists. The gaps suck when you are running.

Well hopefully if they get streaming working they should implement some kind of read-ahead buffer so there are no gaps. As it stands now if you play a song that is 3 minutes long, which is finished download in 30 seconds, you still have to wait for the next track to start downloading before it will play.

But when I use iTunes on my macs it does stream--if I only choose to play not download from the cloud. Seems there is a read-ahead buffer in iTunes so hopefully there will be on iOS soon.

Personally I want the option to stream or download--just like I can do in iTunes.




Michael

 

[jsalda]

I still don't see the point in iTunes match. If you've got songs ripped from a CD they must be on your Mac/PC, so just sync your iPad, iPhone and iPod touch once, and the music will be on all devices. Then continue to use the iTunes store.

And if you have multiple computers, you can now have the libraries sync'd across all of them.

 

[Tinmania]

Hang on...



If it's not matched and uploaded how do Apple determine who to pay royalties to?

Also say there could determine who the artist and label are as these artist/label is not on iTunes how exactly would Apple pay them money?

I think the original article was not completely accurate in that portrayal.

I believe many uploaded songs are in fact identified (there was some assertion that Match uses the same wav analysis tech that is in iTunes TuneUp). So monies can be paid on them, it's just that those labels may have no agreement with iTunes for Match.

Also, I see a lot of people saying that only songs available for purchase can be matched. I know for a fact that not all matched tracks are available for purchase through iTunes. Heck you can not buy any AC-DC track from iTunes but iTunes Match will still match to AC-DC (except for random songs here and there that won't match). So it would seem while AC-DC does not allow iTunes sales, they do have an agreement with Apple for Match.






Michael

 

[milo]

So wait a minute...

If they can't figure out what a given song (say "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window") is to match it...how do they know what it is to pay a royalty on it when that track is uploaded?

Either they can tell what a user's track is or not, this seems fishy, as if they either are paying royalties on their best guess (and wrong in many cases) or they have the threshold for matching set really low and there are many cases where they really do know what track it is but are being unnecessarily picky and not matching.

 

[Tinmania]

Surely there's a way to abuse this system? Upload songs by your own artists, then play them loads of times across many, many devices & accounts? You'd end up getting back a larger share of the iTunes Match "pie" than you deserve.

Paying $25 to get back, at most, 70% of your own pie makes sense in what universe?




Michael

----------

3. iTunes Match _only_ matches your songs against music that is on Apple's store.

As an FYI matched songs are not always on Apple's iTunes store. There apparently can be an agreement for Match but not iTunes music store purchases (e.g., AC-DC).



Michael

 

[Tinmania]

Don't you think it is much easier to first check the the song's Id TAG, if all the Data(Artist-title-time...) is there it already knows which number it is

I am almost certain that was forbidden in the agreements with the labels. I could make 25,000 copies of myself singing the national anthem, fill them all with metadata for other songs, and have 25,000 songs at my disposal for $25.

Indeed iTunes Match completely ignores user metadata. I have tested this by taking songs' metadata and replacing it with completely different songs' metadata--and renamed the actual tracks too. iTunes Match didn't care about the metadata or track names and matched to the actual songs.

I have been using Match since it first went into beta. It has improved greatly from the early days--though still has a ways to go.

From what I see the matching process seems to me roughly like this:
1.) Grab waveform data from first few seconds of track.

2.) Send that data to Match servers.

3.) At this point it is:

a. Matched to only one potential track--match is complete.
b. Not matched.
c. Matched to more than one potential song (e.g., a track with explicit and non-explicit versions). At this point it seems Match will then do a secondary waveform read to differentiate which is the correct version (IMO this is the part that needs work).​

Michael