Well part of the potential upside could be that Apple could (we all better watch the EULAs) share demographic data - the likes of which they could never do before once someone clicks on MATCH. Up until now - in theory - Apple only knew what tracks you bought, looked at, samples, etc. With this match service they can grab a LOT more info from you as to what music you like and sell that data. Or provide it for those music vendors that have an agreement.
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iTunes Match: $24.99/Year, Matches Ripped Tunes, Offers Them In The Cloud
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Well part of the potential upside could be that Apple could (we all better watch the EULAs) share demographic data - the likes of which they could never do before once someone clicks on MATCH. Up until now - in theory - Apple only knew what tracks you bought, looked at, samples, etc. With this match service they can grab a LOT more info from you as to what music you like and sell that data. Or provide it for those music vendors that have an agreement.
I agree completely. I'm certain there's going to be a catch in there somewhere. I'm just not convinced it's streaming only. It may be as simple as the service is only going to recognize MP3s that are purchased from competing services or that are ripped in iTunes. There will be no benefit for music pirates if iTunes says, sorry, you can't upgrade this because we can't recognize it. Then you're just getting an online storage locker for your pirated music for $25 a year. The key is going to be in what music is recognized and matched. And that's where you're going to see an ongoing cat and mouse game between Apple and the pirates.
Here's an interesting stat on the RIAA's legal campaign against pirates:
From 2006-2008, the RIAA spent a combined $64 million in legal/investigative fees but only received $1.4 million in settlement money from the pirates. The lawyers were the only people winning in the lawsuits.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100713/17400810200.shtml
From 2006-2008, the RIAA spent a combined $64 million in legal/investigative fees but only received $1.4 million in settlement money from the pirates. The lawyers were the only people winning in the lawsuits.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100713/17400810200.shtml
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Don't be so sure. What makes the otherwise law-abiding person choose to steal music is that there seems to be no consequence. A good stream of legal actions- even if they never yield big dollar returns- can motivate the borderline pirates to stay on the legal side of the line. There's big revenues in the crowd making the right (pay for the stuff they want) decision.
Furthermore, those that are prosecuted and can't pay don't get away with NOT paying. They still owe the money and pay over time (maybe never all of it, but then they're never free of the monthly bill). If you could get out of big lawsuit fines by simply not having the money to pay, every such settlement would simply result in no payments because every prosecuted entity would leverage various means to be sure they couldn't pay the settlement if the end result is not in their favor.
Blatant example: the O.J. Simpson civil trial fine. He could not pay it. But every time he has since appeared to be making any money from anything, the fine collectors have been there to seize the money. It's unlikely he'll ever be able to pay off that fine, but anything he tries to do to make money until he dies will have a hand outstretched to take the proceeds and pay it toward the outstanding fine balance.
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That's why I said the "kind of money" they hope/think they'll get. They can go after a person for $10 million all they want, but they'll never get it if that person is only making $40,000 per year. So they end up settling for a fraction of what they originally wanted, even though they spent MILLIONS on the lawyers in the first place. Did you see my post with the stats on how much the RIAA has spent in legal fees compared to their settlement income? Over a three year period, they spent $64 million in legal fees and only received $1.4 million in settlement income. That's a bad business model.
Now I do agree that a ton of prosecutions could potentially scare people away from pirating. But if the public becomes aware that the RIAA is only able to get these prosecutions because Apple handed a bunch of user information to them, then other pirates in the future will avoid using the iTunes Match service.
How did Apple get the labels to agree to this? Money! Money now and possibly more money later.
As for pirated music and the service? Part of what Apple paid and will probably be paying for is to legitimatize pirated music.
And now for a thought... You know how music purchased from iTunes has purchaser info in it? I bet anything stored in iCloud will have your information in it when you download it. Now imagine the pirates who don't think about that when they put it up for download by others. The Music industry can now somewhat prove who put the music out there and go after them. The one loophole in this is stolen units. What if the thieves gather music off that and put it up for downloads? Yes you can strip the purchaser information from the tracks, but how many people will think of doing that?
So your $25 a year is going in part to pay for the service and probably in part to the music labels. However I hope the labels don't get paid for music they never controlled.
Oh on your subpoena comment, again how will they know what was legally purchased and what was pirated unless the tracks they get have watermarks in them. If you look at my short iTunes purchase history, it's maybe 1% of my music library (so far). I guess one should keep all their CDs even if they only save the discs in the most compact way possible to prove they paid for all that music.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
No they don't settle if by "settle" you mean they take what the loser of the case can afford to pay. The fine is still $10 million (for example), and the loser will pay toward that fine until they pay it off in total or they cease making money (such as by killing over). I doubt the music industry expects to ever get the $10 million from the $40K/yr individual; what they are hoping to accomplish is to make lots of other $40K/yr individuals choose to stay on the right side of the law.
Unless it motivates many others to NOT pirate.
Besides, it's a bad business model to spend all that must be spent to prove anyone guilty of any crime. I hear it costs the state several million dollars to completely convict each murderer of their crime. There's no ROI in that at all- the remedy is NOT a fine of any sort.
If we decide that attempts to enforce the laws must be profitable at face value ELSE there's no purpose in enforcing all unprofitable laws, then there would be little-to-no law at all. Everything would be tolerated as measured by ROI. Imagine that world for a while.
If it goes that way, the RIAA would have up to what- 170 million(?) libraries to consider pursuing. The relative quantity of up-and-coming pirates of the future who "outsmart" the angle by not "iMatching" would be inconsequential if one of the goals of this is as some have suggested. And if you get a lot of action on the legal front against past & present pirates, some of those future pirates might choose not to break the law when facing the decision for themselves. Funny how prosecution of a few for breaking the laws can motivate the many to stay within the laws.
The same way they do now when the RIAA files a lawsuit against an individual, except now they don't have to come to your house and confiscate your hard drive first, they just send a subpoena to Apple instead. They obviously can't form a case from just that, but it's one more thing in a chain of evidence along with all your internet records that your ISP is tracking. And depending on the EULA, it may be even simpler than that.
Not to mention for a lot of people, the legal fees alone to defend themselves are enough to deter them. I wouldn't want to have to pay out of pocket to go up against the RIAAs army of lawyers. So their scare tactics work for me anyway as I'm sure they work for many others too.
Interesting in the UK at least, damages can only be proportionate not punitive, i.e. the record companies would have to prove how much actual revenue they have lost - which is arguably $15 per album nless you are uploading (which I guess you are under a BitTorrent type mechanism).
I am sure this must be the case in most other European countries.
Why are you assuming that everyone will sign up for the service in the first place? A lot of people won't bother with it, even if they aren't pirates. As far as settlements go, they are never as severe as what the plaintiff originally asks for. Your point about the government is irrelevant compared to a company. The RIAA is a company. It gets revenue from the labels. The labels are seeing a decline in revenue over time, not just because of piracy but also because of the crappy product they are putting on the radio these days. Why spend money to listen to Lady Gaga when I have dozens of purchased albums by great bands like Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and so forth? I have zero interest in listening to or purchasing the "popular" music of today. And I'm sure I am not the only one who feels this way about the state of the music industry. The bottom line is the RIAA cannot afford to keep spending the kind of money they are on legal fees, not with declining revenue and declining interest in their current product.
Because I'm not poor nor cheap, and this service will probably be superior. Wow you're complaining about 25$? Pretty sad.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
On that point, I can't argue. Nor can I argue with points about the subjective quality of modern music vs. the subjective quality of past music (but the subjectivity is just eye- er ears- of the beholder). Some will passionately argue things the other way.
As to "can't afford", the #1 reason the recording industry cites for declining revenues is piracy... not a problem with demand or sales potential; it's a problem with out-of-control theft. Thus, they believe if they can reduce the volume of piracy, revenue growth can resume. Whether that's true or false is somewhat irrelevant. If they do nothing and piracy is the fundamental cause, their fortunes continue to erode toward zero. If the do something and it scares the borderline pirates to behave themselves, they may be able to reverse their revenue declines.
If one can get the milk for free, they rarely buy the cow. The harder it is to get the milk, the more cows get sold. For a long time now, piracy has been perceived as easy and low/no risk: "that guy's doing it with no consequence; why not me too?" But there are also guys getting away with every other kind of crime too. It no more justifies the same kind of logic.
I suspect we may have a whole generation of people who have come up at a time where they had free access to all kinds of media... so much so they take it for granted... maybe even think about it as some kind of right. I sure see a lot of posts over a lot of threads that regularly justify piracy with everything from all variations of "greedy music industry" to "artists get ripped off anyway" to variations of "it's not piracy because I didn't get it from places like Pirate Bay."
My favorite of this group of people are the one's who see no fault with it but are "studying for a career in the music industry". Irony doesn't get much better than that.
Pardon me for not trudging through every page in this thread, but can someone answer a question for me (sorry if it's already been asked).
I have a lot of music ripped in flac which I had to convert to Apple Lossless in order to listen to on an iPod and in iTunes. So according to this iTunes Match service, if the music is in the iTunes Store, then what I will be getting over the cloud is the lower quality aac right?
But what if the music isn't recognised? Will the full alac or m4a be uploaded and pushed back? In which case, wouldn't I prefer to receive the higher quality I own? (even if uploading takes a bit of time). How will this all work together?
Thanks guys
I have a lot of music ripped in flac which I had to convert to Apple Lossless in order to listen to on an iPod and in iTunes. So according to this iTunes Match service, if the music is in the iTunes Store, then what I will be getting over the cloud is the lower quality aac right?
But what if the music isn't recognised? Will the full alac or m4a be uploaded and pushed back? In which case, wouldn't I prefer to receive the higher quality I own? (even if uploading takes a bit of time). How will this all work together?
Thanks guys
Wish we could delete the first 13 pages of this discussion, the last couple have been great!
I keep going back and forth on whether non-purchased music will be download eligible or stream only. Considering MobileMe was $99 a year to sync contacts and calendars across devices, $25 a year to allow synced streaming of your library seems like a reasonable, Apple-style charge.
On the other hand, a lot of people will have legitimately large legally obtained music libraries that weren't purchased on the iTunes store (probably the vast majority of anyone with libraries large enough to push the 25k song limit, can't imagine there are many who have made that many purchases of iTunes), and asking them to pay continuously for access to their own music seems harsh enough to discourage people to sign up for Match and just stick with local syncing.
Assuming Apple wants people to jump on the service, a one-off in that case is plausible. Perhaps they just figure if you have pirated the music, it's there already and getting even a little for it is some kind of win. Would be great to know how $24.99 was decided on, if the service indeed 'launders' your music collection I think they could have charged more for it!
I keep going back and forth on whether non-purchased music will be download eligible or stream only. Considering MobileMe was $99 a year to sync contacts and calendars across devices, $25 a year to allow synced streaming of your library seems like a reasonable, Apple-style charge.
On the other hand, a lot of people will have legitimately large legally obtained music libraries that weren't purchased on the iTunes store (probably the vast majority of anyone with libraries large enough to push the 25k song limit, can't imagine there are many who have made that many purchases of iTunes), and asking them to pay continuously for access to their own music seems harsh enough to discourage people to sign up for Match and just stick with local syncing.
Assuming Apple wants people to jump on the service, a one-off in that case is plausible. Perhaps they just figure if you have pirated the music, it's there already and getting even a little for it is some kind of win. Would be great to know how $24.99 was decided on, if the service indeed 'launders' your music collection I think they could have charged more for it!
The thing is, it's not even the same industry that it was 15 years ago. 15 years ago consumers had to pay $15 if they wanted a few songs from an album. Now they can pay $3 for those three songs instead of shelling out the extra $12 for songs they don't want. Even if the RIAA manages to scare everyone away from piracy, their profit margins will never get back to where they were in the 1990's. They were basically able to make a ton of cash with only a couple of good songs on an album. That's not the case anymore. Now I'm sure they would rather have the $1 per song revenue instead of zero revenue from pirates, obviously. But it will never be what it once was for them.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
The working concept is that the "master" file you stream from iCloud will be the lower quality 256K AAC files, however you could still sync your Lossless files and take them with you instead of streaming.
If there is no match for the file, Apple says those can be uploaded and stored on iCloud and then streamed to you from there.
Prefer the higher quality? My suggestion would be (continue to just) sync the files rather than trying to stream them from iCloud. Not only is there $25 in it, but there's also going to be the toll from AT&T or Verizon for any non-free-wifi streaming you choose to do. That lossless files are bigger files. It wouldn't take very many of them streamed through 3G to burn through a 2GB for $25 cap. You might want to estimate your average lossless file size and then do the math vs. 2GB to see how many of those songs you could stream before having to give AT&T or Verizon more money.
I personally believe that it is almost always going to make more sense to sync and not stream. $25 is nothing. But the AT&T and Verizon tolls will add up quickly when streaming lots of media over the course of even a few days travels. I did the math in another thread. In my own case, my 256AAC files look like they average about 10Mb each. 2000MB (for $25 from AT&T) divided by 10MB = 200 songs. It's easy to play 200 songs in a day or three. That's only about 13 hours of music.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Believe whatever you wish. 15 years ago the population of potential music buyers on the planet was about 4.8 Billion people. Now, there are 6.9 Billion people. In 15 more years, the estimates are that there will be about 8 Billion people. And while the "wealth" here at home feels like it's increasingly pinched, a lot of people elsewhere are emerging markets and making more money than they've ever made before.
If you mitigate the piracy and the new world of digital tracks are locked to iTunes accounts which may or may not be able to be passed on to heirs (for example, try selling any of your iTunes-purchased music to someone else right now), there's an awful lot of new buyers coming, some of which can rebuy all the music of the past and buy some of the music of the future.
If the next generation or two could be moved to seeing piracy as too risky/criminal/abhorrent, industry revenues would likely be much greater than they've ever been- even with people picking & choosing the songs they want to buy, instead of getting stuck with entire albums. As for profitability, if you & I are right about older music being better than newer music and if the future music buyers agree, there is an awful lot of profit in music already long since recorded and then sold as a digital file. The group that was the #2 revenue generator from music sales for the decade of the 2000s last recorded a new song in 1970 (unless you count 2 "new" songs from the Anthology albums).
I know we consumers want to see everything from a "what's best for us" standpoint. But talk to anyone that actually works in that industry and they won't agree that any way we spin wanting music to be free or near free for us is right. They want to be paid for the creations they manage- past, present & future. Their livelihoods depend on being paid for it. We can see them as "outdated business models," "greedy corporate crooks," or however we want to cast "them", but it doesn't change the fact that they own something that people want to own and that the latter should not steal it by any justifications... even the worn out "but everybody else is doing it".
Here's my concern with iTunes Match:
I have about 100 gigs of music (mostly ripped from cd's) and they're all organized "just the way I like it". I've changed a lot of the "default" info on a cd such as "artist" to help me organize my huge music collection.
For example, if the cd's default value for a song and artist shows as:
Song: "I'll Be"
Artist: "Jay-Z featuring Foxy Brown"
I've changed that to:
Song: "I'll Be (f-Foxy Brown)
Artist: "Jay-Z"
I've made these types of changes throughout my large music collection for organizational purposes (on iTunes, iPhone, iPods etc...) and it has worked good for me.
Question: since "uploading" to iCloud/iTunes Match isn't a "physical upload" (how I understand it at this point), will all of my song/album info remain the way I have them organized once it's on iCloud? Hope this makes sense
Although its in it's infant stages, I like the idea of storing my music on iCloud. For $25/year, I think it's worth it for the simple fact of having a "backup" of my music.
I have about 100 gigs of music (mostly ripped from cd's) and they're all organized "just the way I like it". I've changed a lot of the "default" info on a cd such as "artist" to help me organize my huge music collection.
For example, if the cd's default value for a song and artist shows as:
Song: "I'll Be"
Artist: "Jay-Z featuring Foxy Brown"
I've changed that to:
Song: "I'll Be (f-Foxy Brown)
Artist: "Jay-Z"
I've made these types of changes throughout my large music collection for organizational purposes (on iTunes, iPhone, iPods etc...) and it has worked good for me.
Question: since "uploading" to iCloud/iTunes Match isn't a "physical upload" (how I understand it at this point), will all of my song/album info remain the way I have them organized once it's on iCloud? Hope this makes sense
Although its in it's infant stages, I like the idea of storing my music on iCloud. For $25/year, I think it's worth it for the simple fact of having a "backup" of my music.
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I fully agree that they should be paid. I do think it's a two-way street though. The best thing about iTunes is that it gave consumers the ability to say "no" to crappy filler songs on albums if the consumers only wanted to buy a few tracks. If they want our money, they should have to earn it. The system in the 1990's was way too cushy for the industry. It allowed them to get lazy in the product they were putting out. Setting piracy aside, the industry has sort of returned to the 1950's situation where singles ruled the day.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
curtisinoc, my best guess answer to your question is that you'll still retain it as you've adjusted it at home. Everything you choose to sync (as you do now) will still show as you've adjusted the tags.
If iCloud is streaming and you stream rather than sync some of your media, it seems likely how it shows on your iDevice away from home is however it is tagged by Apple. I suppose there is a chance that iCloud might be set up to retain user customized tag adjustments while still streaming the underlying master file audio (and that would be an impressive, proactively thoughtful touch by Apple) but I would bet on the former.
If iCloud is a replacement-oriented service for songs you've NOT purchased via iTunes, I'm guessing that replacing what you've adapted with the 256K AAC will probably involve you having to go in and retag again... if you want to replace the music. Again, that nice touch could show itself here too.
Personally, I believe iCloud for non-iTunes purchases is going to be a streaming service, so it won't allow us to replace our music with 256K AAC files and thus whatever format we have now and however we have it tagged will persist in the local (hard disk) iTunes library.
But the only correct answer to your question is when Apple answers it directly... or in the Fall when you can see first hand.
If iCloud is streaming and you stream rather than sync some of your media, it seems likely how it shows on your iDevice away from home is however it is tagged by Apple. I suppose there is a chance that iCloud might be set up to retain user customized tag adjustments while still streaming the underlying master file audio (and that would be an impressive, proactively thoughtful touch by Apple) but I would bet on the former.
If iCloud is a replacement-oriented service for songs you've NOT purchased via iTunes, I'm guessing that replacing what you've adapted with the 256K AAC will probably involve you having to go in and retag again... if you want to replace the music. Again, that nice touch could show itself here too.
Personally, I believe iCloud for non-iTunes purchases is going to be a streaming service, so it won't allow us to replace our music with 256K AAC files and thus whatever format we have now and however we have it tagged will persist in the local (hard disk) iTunes library.
But the only correct answer to your question is when Apple answers it directly... or in the Fall when you can see first hand.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
That's right. The best thing about that from a music quality standpoint is that a singles-oriented world also puts the pressure on the artists to put max effort into every track, as it's not the record companies composing the filler for the albums. The heat is increasingly on to try to make every album a "best of" type album so that every digital song buyer sees buying the whole album as better than buying 3-6 or so individual tracks. That's also how the pricing is now set up.
Maybe the cushy period that encouraged one-hit albums will give way to a revival of an abundance of outstanding music from many artists in the future? That will be great. I'm not sure how many more years I can live in the past musically with no new music coming out from the "good old days".
The biggest disappointment to me is how the rock genre has collapsed. Maybe the stuff from the past is just the absolute best we'll ever get and so no one can come along to at least rekindle demand in the public for it. I also think the labels themselves aren't putting in the effort to market lesser known rock bands. Even Lady GaGa started as a rock singer and gave up on the genre because she realized it was a dead end in the industry. The focus is all pop and rap at this point.
Thanks Darryl . . . Yeah, I guess we'll just wait and see. It would be awesome if Apple did think of this (that users have tagged their collection differently) than what may be on their servers . . this could actually be a "deal-breaker" for me.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
That's just cycles. When the Beatles auditioned for Decca in 1962, the belief (which was also building within the industry at the time) was in the feedback they got...
It's always only a matter of time until things come around again. I won't believe that all the great rock that can be created has been created. I think the business is just going where the easiest money seems to be right now. There have been times when Folk, Polka, and Yodeling music dominated the business as well (no offense to any fans of those kinds of music). Today's pop & rap might be looked back upon in 15 years like we see disco and yodel now. Eventually the pop & rap artists will start sounding too much like stuff recently recorded and the music buyers will turn the page to something else (hopefully great rock before I'm too old).
"guitar groups are on the way out"
and
"the Beatles have no future in show business"
and
"the Beatles have no future in show business"
It's always only a matter of time until things come around again. I won't believe that all the great rock that can be created has been created. I think the business is just going where the easiest money seems to be right now. There have been times when Folk, Polka, and Yodeling music dominated the business as well (no offense to any fans of those kinds of music). Today's pop & rap might be looked back upon in 15 years like we see disco and yodel now. Eventually the pop & rap artists will start sounding too much like stuff recently recorded and the music buyers will turn the page to something else (hopefully great rock before I'm too old).