I wonder how this will affect songs I've ripped from vinyl. I have hundreds of songs pulled from vinyl that are of questionable quality, but are tagged correctly. I wonder what Apple will do with these?
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Little and Big Music Disagree On 'iTunes Match'
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well, a nice to have, but can live without...
I have all my music in ALAC (ripped from purchased CDs), and I don't expect iCloud to hold it in this format. I also don't expect iTunes/iCloud to match all my music. Why? Because my music is already on my computer and I can always sync it via cable to my player.
I do have some very few albums in mp3/aac format, and having iTunes matching in a relatively high(er) quality compressed format is good and I like it, and I can eventually use this functionality, but honestly, I'll not pay yearly subscription for that. Those mp3/aacs I can also sync them for free via cable to all my players.
I have all my music in ALAC (ripped from purchased CDs), and I don't expect iCloud to hold it in this format. I also don't expect iTunes/iCloud to match all my music. Why? Because my music is already on my computer and I can always sync it via cable to my player.
I do have some very few albums in mp3/aac format, and having iTunes matching in a relatively high(er) quality compressed format is good and I like it, and I can eventually use this functionality, but honestly, I'll not pay yearly subscription for that. Those mp3/aacs I can also sync them for free via cable to all my players.
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One of the big selling points to the recording industry (not saying it's enough alone or that it's fully warranted) is that Apple will be able to provide the labels with unprecedented metrics/demographics.
Right now - the labels can only chart sales based on who buys music legitimately through iTunes, Amazon, etc. I'm not sure what demographic data they get now - nor how that might change with Match. But what will happen is that if Match is popular - they will have a much clearer picture since people will be uploading (and authorizing Apple) to analyze their music library.
Not only can they see that you bought their song - but they could, in theory, have metrics on your entire library - what your musical preferences lean towards, whether you buy full albums or individual tracks, etc.
Again - I don't think this is the sole reason they might have gone for it - but it's playing a significant role.
Right now - the labels can only chart sales based on who buys music legitimately through iTunes, Amazon, etc. I'm not sure what demographic data they get now - nor how that might change with Match. But what will happen is that if Match is popular - they will have a much clearer picture since people will be uploading (and authorizing Apple) to analyze their music library.
Not only can they see that you bought their song - but they could, in theory, have metrics on your entire library - what your musical preferences lean towards, whether you buy full albums or individual tracks, etc.
Again - I don't think this is the sole reason they might have gone for it - but it's playing a significant role.
by businessperson you mean the labels owners right?
i saw an interview of a singer (can't recall who so i won't say who it was) and that singer was asked about the cd "piracy"... the answer was something like this.
"i really don't mind if one person buys an album and copies it to his friends. it's more people to come to my live shows."
the issue is that... record labels mind about cd's/mp3 sales, many of the artists don't because they get their bucks in live shows.
edit: for the one who gave a negative to my comment... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCkX0KcNwrI
like her there are many
i do too and better yet... will there be an option to avoid those being matched? because i really like the quality of them.
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I disagree that the purpose of iTunes Match is to let people make their stolen music legit. It's a side effect to the design, the real purpose is to let people transform their CD collection into iTunes purchases. Those of us who grew up before the year 2000 tend to have large CD collections laying around, and this new system gives them incentive to rip that music to iTunes. I still buy CDs if it's a great album, examples of this for me would be:
Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Tom Waits - Alice
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
The National - Boxer
Beach House - Teen Dream
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
Arcade Fire - Funeral
M. Ward - Post War
The Walkmen - Bows + Arrows
LCD Sound System - This Is Happening
... and the list goes on. The point is that my collection is about 400 strong, and all those albums are worth the price I paid for them.
The problem is with the industry, not the market. If you make a great album, then people can justify a $10-$15 price tag. But when artists or record labels are arrogant enough to assume that every album they release is worth $10-$15... there's your problem. What other market works this way? Imagine if all cars were priced the same, from the Toyota Corolla to the Lexus LS... would you still buy that Corolla? If labels would price the value of an album based on the quality/popularity of the music, not only would it drive artists to create better albums, but it would probably convince other people to explore less expensive newer/lesser-known artists. And if the customer buys something from an unknown that they're not happy with, they only wasted $3 instead of $10.
The problem isn't with Customers or Apple, this problems lays solely on the shoulders of the music industry and I couldn't be happier that musicians are starting to record and distribute their own music instead of going through major record labels.
Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Tom Waits - Alice
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
The National - Boxer
Beach House - Teen Dream
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
Arcade Fire - Funeral
M. Ward - Post War
The Walkmen - Bows + Arrows
LCD Sound System - This Is Happening
... and the list goes on. The point is that my collection is about 400 strong, and all those albums are worth the price I paid for them.
The problem is with the industry, not the market. If you make a great album, then people can justify a $10-$15 price tag. But when artists or record labels are arrogant enough to assume that every album they release is worth $10-$15... there's your problem. What other market works this way? Imagine if all cars were priced the same, from the Toyota Corolla to the Lexus LS... would you still buy that Corolla? If labels would price the value of an album based on the quality/popularity of the music, not only would it drive artists to create better albums, but it would probably convince other people to explore less expensive newer/lesser-known artists. And if the customer buys something from an unknown that they're not happy with, they only wasted $3 instead of $10.
The problem isn't with Customers or Apple, this problems lays solely on the shoulders of the music industry and I couldn't be happier that musicians are starting to record and distribute their own music instead of going through major record labels.
That's what worries me, this becoming all of a sudden an IRS-like audit of 'Where did you get this from?'. What if, for example, you ripped music from CDs that you bought years ago (and no you don't have the receipts anymore) and you lost them while moving? Are you supposed to delete them?
What if there is music that you ripped from your CDs that you left in a box in your parents attic in another state? Another country?
What if there is music that you ripped from your CDs that you left in a box in your parents attic in another state? Another country?
I have 37000 (37k) songs from my CDs I personally ripped into ITunes many years ago--at the then going bit rate of 128kb AAC.
Still to be determined is how many tunes that 25 bucks a year will cover, and how one can change over to the 256kb AAC version. will it be automatic OR will you have to manually delete each album and download it again?
also, what happens to the personal metadata?
Still to be determined is how many tunes that 25 bucks a year will cover, and how one can change over to the 256kb AAC version. will it be automatic OR will you have to manually delete each album and download it again?
also, what happens to the personal metadata?
Yes. Because $24.99 is more than $0.
Ah, but that's faulty logic. That would only apply if you were intending on paying for your music either way, which isn't the case. You obviously don't plan on paying for what you already have (or you would have done it already) so Apple figures they can offer you this service and get $25 out of you instead of nothing at all. It's a net gain for them (and the record industry).
THAT is why iTunes Match is the way it is. It's 2011. Anyone with the knowledge and motive to pirate music has already done it and has the content for free anyway. This is a way to monetize tracks that were already stolen. They don't care if some people use it once to download "legal" copies and then never come back. The vast majority of people will keep their Match subscriptions and those who don't will have at least paid once.
I agree something is better than nothing. But that something COULD be pretty small. Yeah - but it also depends on what their contracts are. How many labels are there? How much from the 24.99 is being distributed - and how?
IE - Say I have 20,000 songs that get matched. That's a pretty small amount per song. Does Apple have "match" agreements with every music label in their library - or will match only work for labels who have been onboarded? I ask because if any label that has a track on iTunes can be matched - then it's possible for my 20,000 songs to be spread out amongst hundreds of labels. Even if it was just 20 labels - that's less than $1 I'm sure per label.
There's a lot of unknowns on how the whole Match business model is (for the consumer at this point). I am sure after it's "live" - there were be reports/analysts who will weigh in on what's going on behind the scenes as much as they can speculate/learn.
I feel sorry for the small labels too, I guess this is a big picture move as the article describes.
let me check....
hello...mr sevier? yes hi. it's me, the year 2011. Hello! yes, we live in a digital age. if your company cannot survive, perhaps you need to think about another career. thousands of small recording companies have been swallowed by the advent of the compact disc. you're not alone. you can make art for the sake of art - it is not too late to learn a new skill - perhaps you can pay your bills like the rest of the true artists by temping at Kinkos, perhaps? Again, welcome the the year 2011, enjoy your stay.
(I hope you caught my sarcasm, i'm laying it on pretty thick)
hello...mr sevier? yes hi. it's me, the year 2011. Hello! yes, we live in a digital age. if your company cannot survive, perhaps you need to think about another career. thousands of small recording companies have been swallowed by the advent of the compact disc. you're not alone. you can make art for the sake of art - it is not too late to learn a new skill - perhaps you can pay your bills like the rest of the true artists by temping at Kinkos, perhaps? Again, welcome the the year 2011, enjoy your stay.
(I hope you caught my sarcasm, i'm laying it on pretty thick)
Big portion? And of what? Let say Apple would take their usual 30% for storage, bandwidth, etc. And that the record companies would take 40%. That would leave $7.50. Let's say the user have 1000 illegal songs matched. That would mean that the artists would be paid 0.75 cents per song and year. And this is for 1000 songs, I bet most pirating people would be matching a lot more songs.
this debate should be "louder", its very true
as a small label we can never stop people from downloading non-legal.
but those who buy buy for example because they want the "comfort" of a "legalized" music file.
if i give all "other" files the complete comfort of legalizing - thats not okay, cause
its one more big! reason not to buy and download illegal instead!
Apple doesnt care because they dont create music! They make money with subscriptions and ipods
What we'll hear is: you still have the option to withdraw your content from itunes. This way well lose money too. But if we stay in itunes, thats means we officially support this policy...and we cant do that! Only companies can do it that make money also from publising, concerts etc...but not a label
its something very very different if some russian rapidshare site offers your tunes for free or if the label itself does it!!!! in the first case you might catch a virus or get tracked downloading. its illegal and its stealing and the feeling remains. in the second case....there is no more reason to pay!!!
So either way, for a small label this means losing money in my opinion.
as a small label we can never stop people from downloading non-legal.
but those who buy buy for example because they want the "comfort" of a "legalized" music file.
if i give all "other" files the complete comfort of legalizing - thats not okay, cause
its one more big! reason not to buy and download illegal instead!
Apple doesnt care because they dont create music! They make money with subscriptions and ipods
What we'll hear is: you still have the option to withdraw your content from itunes. This way well lose money too. But if we stay in itunes, thats means we officially support this policy...and we cant do that! Only companies can do it that make money also from publising, concerts etc...but not a label
its something very very different if some russian rapidshare site offers your tunes for free or if the label itself does it!!!! in the first case you might catch a virus or get tracked downloading. its illegal and its stealing and the feeling remains. in the second case....there is no more reason to pay!!!
So either way, for a small label this means losing money in my opinion.
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Come on everybody!! The difference is that the "pirate" is for the first time paying Apple $25.
1. You cannot stop someone from pirating music.
2. Music labels aren't profiting jack **** from pirate music = 0$
3. Apple is providing the music labels with a convincing argument of a monthly subscription based income - iTunes Match
4. If there are at least 500 million itunes accounts holders with credit cards or even a billion users - that's a potential of 500 million x $25 income to Apple and subsequent Music labels.
5. How many honest users out there want a clean iTunes library?
6. Legitimizing your library is psychologically satisfying.
7. Downloading pirated music is dead! (probably not in 3rd world)
Nobody wants to mess with torrents, rapidshare etc. unless your über geek and represent 1% of the population. Most home users and families these days and even teenagers are finding it easier to buy from iTunes or buying the CD or browing it from a "friend" to rip into iTunes.
99.9% of my library is legit - incl. songs that I have purchased from iTunes and around have that are ripped from my own purchased CD's. Itunes songs are far better quality then what you will be able to rip home from CD as they come from the MASTER copy.
1. Why would Apple, making billions from selling songs in the iTunes store, start with a streaming service? They would lose billions on it.
2. If they did, it would not be $24.99/month, considering that the competition is likely to offer the same service for $10-15/month.
This is exactly what I was going to say. If uploaded music (stuff that Apple doesn't already have on iTunes) gets "same benefits as music purchased from iTunes", then that means it can be re-downloaded to each device as needed, just like the purchases from iTunes can. That seems like the most logical explanation, at least.
OK this is my take on the whole music (and somewhat movie) industry and its inability to tackle piracy effectively.
Things have changed. We now live in a digital age where people want o own their media digitally. I know theres always people that like the physical item, and they can still be catered for, but the explosion of the ipod and itunes shows that people are happy with digital music.
I cannot see how an album can cost the same to buy digitally as what it does to buy a physical CD. Your buying 1's a 0's when you buy a digital album. The pricing for such is plain wrong.
My suggestion...
All albums priced at 99p (or equivalent) in the iTunes music store.
People would not think twice about 99p for an album download. You like the look of it and you'd get it. No looking for it on torrents etc, trying to get it downloaded, not knowing the quality it will be as you don't know the source, possibly getting fake files, then tagging it getting artwork, renaming tracks etc. You would ditch all that if it came up for sale at 99p.
Take the numbers in this topic for example. They sell 10k albums now, say at an average of £7.99 an album. That equates to £79,900. But 80k get pirated. If those 80k were converted to a 99p download, then your looking at 90K album purchases at 99p meaning a total of £89,100. More money.
I know this is very crude, and that even at 99p some people will still pirate it for free, but you will surely pick up many more sales from people that will then happily take a punt on the album. With the greater numbers of sales, would come the greater number of tickets sold for live gigs, merchandise etc etc.
Thats why the app store has been such a huge success. Apps are cheap. Take Angry birds. Many hours of enjoyment for the buyer, some hard work gone into development and producing it, and its paid off. Millions of people own it, not just because its good. But because its cheap, I would hazard a guess that it would not have been half as successful had they charged £7.99 from the start, rather than 59p.
Apply the same theory to the movie industry with digital downloads of movies for 99p. Its hard to feel sorry for the poor old pirated movie industry when the top actors get paid $20M + for a couple of months work.
Record and movie industries need to wake up and try something different., rather than trying to mend a broken, old and outdated model.
Things have changed. We now live in a digital age where people want o own their media digitally. I know theres always people that like the physical item, and they can still be catered for, but the explosion of the ipod and itunes shows that people are happy with digital music.
I cannot see how an album can cost the same to buy digitally as what it does to buy a physical CD. Your buying 1's a 0's when you buy a digital album. The pricing for such is plain wrong.
My suggestion...
All albums priced at 99p (or equivalent) in the iTunes music store.
People would not think twice about 99p for an album download. You like the look of it and you'd get it. No looking for it on torrents etc, trying to get it downloaded, not knowing the quality it will be as you don't know the source, possibly getting fake files, then tagging it getting artwork, renaming tracks etc. You would ditch all that if it came up for sale at 99p.
Take the numbers in this topic for example. They sell 10k albums now, say at an average of £7.99 an album. That equates to £79,900. But 80k get pirated. If those 80k were converted to a 99p download, then your looking at 90K album purchases at 99p meaning a total of £89,100. More money.
I know this is very crude, and that even at 99p some people will still pirate it for free, but you will surely pick up many more sales from people that will then happily take a punt on the album. With the greater numbers of sales, would come the greater number of tickets sold for live gigs, merchandise etc etc.
Thats why the app store has been such a huge success. Apps are cheap. Take Angry birds. Many hours of enjoyment for the buyer, some hard work gone into development and producing it, and its paid off. Millions of people own it, not just because its good. But because its cheap, I would hazard a guess that it would not have been half as successful had they charged £7.99 from the start, rather than 59p.
Apply the same theory to the movie industry with digital downloads of movies for 99p. Its hard to feel sorry for the poor old pirated movie industry when the top actors get paid $20M + for a couple of months work.
Record and movie industries need to wake up and try something different., rather than trying to mend a broken, old and outdated model.
I pretty certain RIAA is able to identify all scene releases of music, and a lot of other illegally shared music.
One thing is certain, we are a long way from Napster, who if I recall it correctly, promised that they would be able to identify and remove 97% of all illegal music in their sharing network, but that wasn't enough.
Apple can, and the record companies should have insisted on it, identify a lot of illegally downloaded music that user would want to match.
I have about 250GB of music in iTunes. Only about 400 tracks are off iTunes. About 1,000 tracks off Amazon and another 1,000 from emusic and the rest are ripped off my CDs. I rip in AAC VBR 360. I think of iCoud as insurance, like having an off-site locker for my music, photos, records incase something happens to my home machine and that is what the $25 is for. Since I'm going to need more than 5GB of space on their servers I assume I will be paying more than the $25 for the additional space I will need. I currently have a backup 2TB external HD for all my music/TV/Movies but if something happened to my house like fire it would be just as vulnerable. Off-site storage is the way to go.
Here's how this is going to work <<bookmarks post for future told-ya-so-ing>>
Imagine a brand new user of iTunes with a brand new Mac and a brand new empty iPod Touch. He hears about this iTunes Match which puts "all his music on all his devices all the time." Sounds good.
He wants some Beatles music. He gets an Apple ID on his computer and buys "Abbey Road" from the iTunes Store. He is asked if he wants purchased items to automatically download to his other registered devices. He says yes. Then he rips his "Magical Mystery Tour" CD at 128kpbs AAC and enters all the metadata. Finally he goes out to the internet and torrents "Let It Be" and "Beatles Bootlegs" at varying MP3 bitrates, and cleans up their metadata.
He now has a Beatles playlist with 30 songs and 4 albums in it in iTunes. He signs up for iTunes Match and is charged $24.95 for the year. iTunes Match scans his library, in all likelihood using a combination of the iTunes Library.xml file and metadata from the songs, and a few moments later throws him a dialog
Now he turns on his iPod Touch with iOS5 - no need to plug into the computer, it's PC free. He logs into the Music app with his Apple ID and BOOM magic...there is already a Beatles playlist there with 30 songs and 4 albums in it. He puts it in shuffle mode and presses play. Here's what happens....
This will all be seamless with no discernible buffering or hiccups, and feel exactly like all the music is on the iPod. Over the years he keeps paying his $24,95/yr and increases his iTunes Library up to the max of 25,000 matched songs, another 25,000 songs he purchased from iTunes, and another 1000 unmatched stored on his 5GB of iCloud. He now has iTunes and an iPod Touch with 51,000 songs "on it" although the reality is that none of those songs have to take up any flash drive space, they are all on "the cloud" one way or another and available on all devices all the time (as long as he has an internet connection). If he drops his iTunes Match account, all his music is still on his computer, and purchased songs can be re-downloaded and pushed all around device to device (exactly like now) wireless or with USB. But he loses the seamlessliy integrated cloud access to the matched songs and the unmatched uploaded songs. That's what the $24.95 is paying for.
If you know how LaLa worked, or understand how Spotify or Pandora work, or even some of the currently available iOS apps that stream your iTunes Library from your always-on computer using your home internet connection, you should see that this is Apple's typically elegant entry in this same sort of service. Nobody, including Apple, is giving away unlimited 256kbps AAC files for keeps just because you took the time to rip or torrent a song at some point in your life. They are marketing it as YOUR music on all YOUR devices wherever YOU are. But really it's Pandora using your iTunes Library.xml for the playlists and Apple's copies of the songs. The "same benefit" given to matched songs or unmatched but uploaded songs is that they appear in the cloud and can be played anywhere anytime (that you have an internet connection).
Imagine a brand new user of iTunes with a brand new Mac and a brand new empty iPod Touch. He hears about this iTunes Match which puts "all his music on all his devices all the time." Sounds good.
He wants some Beatles music. He gets an Apple ID on his computer and buys "Abbey Road" from the iTunes Store. He is asked if he wants purchased items to automatically download to his other registered devices. He says yes. Then he rips his "Magical Mystery Tour" CD at 128kpbs AAC and enters all the metadata. Finally he goes out to the internet and torrents "Let It Be" and "Beatles Bootlegs" at varying MP3 bitrates, and cleans up their metadata.
He now has a Beatles playlist with 30 songs and 4 albums in it in iTunes. He signs up for iTunes Match and is charged $24.95 for the year. iTunes Match scans his library, in all likelihood using a combination of the iTunes Library.xml file and metadata from the songs, and a few moments later throws him a dialog
iTunes Match was not able to match 10 songs in your library. Do you want to upload them to your 5GB iCloud account?
<<clicks Yes - these would be the Beatles Bootleg collection - everything else matched>>
<<clicks Yes - these would be the Beatles Bootleg collection - everything else matched>>
Now he turns on his iPod Touch with iOS5 - no need to plug into the computer, it's PC free
. He logs into the Music app with his Apple ID and BOOM magic...there is already a Beatles playlist there with 30 songs and 4 albums in it. He puts it in shuffle mode and presses play. Here's what happens....- iPod comes to a song from Abbey Road (purchased iTunes content): Since he said he wanted to automatically download purchased content to his other devices, these songs files are in fact stored locally and taking up flash drive space on his iPod, assuming enough time has passed for them to have downloaded (this happens presently with the iTunes in the Cloud beta).
- iPod comes to a song from the Beatles Bootlegs (unmatched content): Since he chose to upload these songs to the iCloud, they will also download to his device and the song files are there, taking up flash drive space on his iPod, stored locally.
- iPod comes to a song from the Magical Mystery Tour or Let It Be: iPod plays/streams/downloads (whatever you want to call it) the full iTunes Store version of the song in 256kbps AAC glory, indistinguishable from the above 2 scenarios, indistinguishable from the 90-second previews currently offered by the iTunes Store. In all likelihood will have a BUY button visible in the playlist and maybe even on the Now Playing screen. Once the song is finished playing there is no stored file taking up flash drive space on the iPod locally. The song has played, one way or another, directly from the iTunes Store.
This will all be seamless with no discernible buffering or hiccups, and feel exactly like all the music is on the iPod. Over the years he keeps paying his $24,95/yr and increases his iTunes Library up to the max of 25,000 matched songs, another 25,000 songs he purchased from iTunes, and another 1000 unmatched stored on his 5GB of iCloud. He now has iTunes and an iPod Touch with 51,000 songs "on it" although the reality is that none of those songs have to take up any flash drive space, they are all on "the cloud" one way or another and available on all devices all the time (as long as he has an internet connection). If he drops his iTunes Match account, all his music is still on his computer, and purchased songs can be re-downloaded and pushed all around device to device (exactly like now) wireless or with USB. But he loses the seamlessliy integrated cloud access to the matched songs and the unmatched uploaded songs. That's what the $24.95 is paying for.
If you know how LaLa worked, or understand how Spotify or Pandora work, or even some of the currently available iOS apps that stream your iTunes Library from your always-on computer using your home internet connection, you should see that this is Apple's typically elegant entry in this same sort of service. Nobody, including Apple, is giving away unlimited 256kbps AAC files for keeps just because you took the time to rip or torrent a song at some point in your life. They are marketing it as YOUR music on all YOUR devices wherever YOU are. But really it's Pandora using your iTunes Library.xml for the playlists and Apple's copies of the songs. The "same benefit" given to matched songs or unmatched but uploaded songs is that they appear in the cloud and can be played anywhere anytime (that you have an internet connection).
Great to see a poster in an Apple forum complaining about being charged exorbitant amounts of money for a product.
It's not about what Apple makes selling iPhones? Sorry...
It's the only way I could justify spending the $25 or so a year on the service... I think they know that. That's why they're looking the other way.
That being said, I've got a closet literally full of about 400 cd's.
Not to mention about 150 vinyls I've collected.
iTunes Vinyl Match anyone?
That being said, I've got a closet literally full of about 400 cd's.
Not to mention about 150 vinyls I've collected.
iTunes Vinyl Match anyone?
Without enough time to read through everyone's post right now, I have this to say. Perhaps "Big Music" has accepted the fact that they cannot combat piracy. And instead of making $0 they will take a small percentage that Apple will give them from the $24.99 a year annual fee. Some money is better than no money.
Not sure what your point is. I have no problem with what Apple charges for their products. I buy them all anyway. I get my moneys worth and I get value for that. It may cost £500 for an iPhone, but I use it to its full potential, and by the end of my use of it, it sells on to someone else without a great deal of loss. I feel its worth its value.
However I do feel that the pricing of music and movies is wrong.
(Sorry thought you were quoting my post, but its still kinda relevant
)