Little and Big Music Disagree On 'iTunes Match'

[kingtj]

re: small record labels

Same here... I support the small labels and what they've tried to do. But at the same time, I think they're focusing anger on the wrong people if they're upset at Apple and the iTunes/iCloud model.

If you're not willing to pay the price of a particular music album in the first place, then you're not willing to pay for it. If however, you did like it at least enough to allocate a little disk space for a pirated copy on your computer? At least with this new proposal from Apple, they *might* stand to make a little bit of revenue from you if you coughed up the $25 per year for the streaming feature that indexed that pirated album as part of your collection.

It sounds like these guys want to "have it all", and think they have a stronger business case for the "all or nothing" attitude, simply because they don't do nearly as much volume of music sales as a major label. Well, sorry -- but the world just doesn't work that way. As long as the technology has existed to duplicate music for personal use, people have elected to make copies of some of it, vs. paying for a legal copy produced by the record label. By the same token though? Sometimes those same people who made the illegal copies wound up becoming big fans of the artists and spent a lot more money on concert tickets to see them live, later on. Other times, they made a point to buy their future albums after discovering they liked them from the "pirated" copies of their earlier work. IMHO, this stuff is basically all a "wash" in the end -- and they'd be best to concentrate on producing quality music for people and let the marketplace do what it does.

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.

 

[milo]

Don't forget that the iCloud/sync/re-download option for music is only available in the US... for now

Correct, plus iTunes match isn't even released yet. And they may still continue to ask for the thirty cents from people who aren't paying the annual $25, it's another incentive for people to subscribe.

To get off the silly streaming vs. download topic...

I'm very curious about more of the functionality specifics. Will cloud copies of a user's song grab the star ratings from the library? Update play counts over the cloud? What about customized metadata? Any lyrics that have been added to the files? Syncing and removing files based on playlists as well as live updating to smart playlists?

I know the files themselves will be the same for everyone but it seems like things like stars, play count, and even metadata are tiny compared to the audio and it seems like it should be possible to keep those synced as well, especially in a system that also does cloud syncing of documents and other info. I'm not getting my hopes up for the first version, but I hope apple is thinking about these sorts of things and has them on their to-do list.

Also, how will the local upgrade to files work? I assume it will add the new files instead of replacing them? Will there be an option to easily remove the old ones once the new ones are there and it's confirmed they are working OK? Options to upgrade the whole library or specific parts easily, including things like only upgrading files that are below a given bitrate? An easy way to swap in the new files to playlists, and handling play count and star ratings? Tags - doing it over the cloud is more ambitious but it seems like it shouldn't be a big deal to copy over customized tags (including things like lyrics) on the main library.

And with the 25k limit, will users who have more than that have the ability to choose which are included and which not (including the ability to easily remove songs uploaded to that 5 gigs)? I have lots of custom stuff that frankly I don't WANT uploaded and would never need to get from the cloud.

I think the idea has great potential and for me it's almost worth doing just for the opportunity to upgrade old files, mobile or no mobile. But hopefully apple will really nail the functionality of the service, for me that's what will make the difference between using it or not.

I just hope they'll do a better job matching songs than they do matching the album artwork. Geez, right now, this function is such a hit and miss...

No, really, it is.
Plus, I don't want to end up with an "unmatched" album just because they added "The" in front of Greatest Hits (instead of just plain old Greatest Hits)

Amen to that. My "automatic" album covers are a mess more often than not. They're going to need a vast improvement in recognizing albums and songs or Match is going to get crushed by users having tons of problems with it.

 

[cmendill]

Itunes songs are far better quality then what you will be able to rip home from CD as they come from the MASTER copy.

WHAT???

Your CD's come from the MASTER copy too. They are digitally identical.

My 1's and 0's sound better than your 1's and 0's.

The quality of compression is by far the more important thing to consider when determining the quality of a digital audio file. And you can rip your CD's just as well, or better than Apple does.

 

[Obi-Wan Kubrick]

I still buy CD's that are sale at Target all the time. They are $8 or $10 then I jsut rip them to iTunes. I can always have the original CD and re-import it any any quality I want. I buy very few songs from iTunes.

 

[ChrisA]

"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."

What this should tell anyone with a business degree: There is great demand for your product but it is priced wrong.

Draw a graph of price vs. unit sales. We know two points on the graph. At "list price" ($16??) we know the units sales is 10,000 units. At $0.00 (free except for the effort to download it) the unit sales is 80,000.

One might assume that at price between $16 and $0 there would be unit sales between 10K and 80K. The million dollar question is this: How many would you sell if the list price was $4 or $6 or $12. Look at two options:

1) List price of $4, 50,000 units sold is $200,000 in sales
2) List price $16, 10,000 units sold is $160,000 in sales.

If the above right and he really would make more money by lowering the price then he's priced the product wrong.

I'm pretty sure the only way to save to CD industry is to get prices in line with what there customers can pay. I'd say CDs for under $10 would actually bring in more money in total.

 

[jettredmont]

Numero has other more important problems ...

I'm not Numero's audience, but it seems to me from a perusal of their website (httP://www.numerogroup.com) that they have some major reasons people tend to pirate more often than pay for their music:

1. They really aren't specializing in music. They are specializing in physical stuff to accompany music (which so far as I can see is all available or was once available elsewhere). And, that physical stuff is mega-expensive. You look at their album lists and see the MP3 "album" available for $10 and the "real thing" selling for $30 and you wonder just what you would be getting with that MP3 album. And then you start thinking about how really, that's not what Numero is about, and that you could get those same tracks elsewhere, and maybe you just should.

2. The web site is "protected" by Flash. If you search for any of the artists or albums I see there on Google, you generally don't get Numero's site, and Numero's site doesn't scream "This is the legitimate site for this music" once you do hit it, tenth in the list or worse. A rather big part of that is that all the site's navigation is "protected" by an opaque Flash app.

3. There are no links over to "legitimate" music sellers. I'm sure Numero is legitimate, but most people are a bit reticent to put their credit card info into some label's site to download a few tracks. They'd seem much larger sales volume, I would bet, if they had visible links over to iTunes and Amazon like most larger labels do.

Between the three of these, I would definitely expect the label to not make a huge number of digital sales. I wouldn't expect them to make a huge number of physical sales either, but "volume" isn't their business there. Comparing the small number of MP3 sales they make (I'm surprised they get in the tens of thousands, personally) to the demand for the music, when their whole business is built on talking people into wanting more than just a digital download, doesn't seem to make sense.

So, it's too bad they won't be available on iTunes Match. I'm sure folks would love to have their Syl Johnson discography in the cloud. But it doesn't sound like a really good match to begin with.

 

[ChrisA]

Itunes songs are far better quality then what you will be able to rip home from CD as they come from the MASTER copy.

I agree with most of what you said, but the above is 100% not-true purely on technical grounds.

Rips from CDs can be MUCH better quality then what is sold on iTunes for two reasons.

1) iTunes does NOT sell faithful copies of the "master". So you entire premise is wrong. iTunes only offers intensionally compressed 256Kb/second versions of the files. These have been processed any only sound "close" to the same tracks that are on the CD. Maybe close enough that many casual listeners can't notice the difference but still you never get the true "CD Quality" from iTunes.

2) There is no generational loss in digital copies, a tenth copy of a copy of a copy is as good as the original (unless something is broken or some one made a technical error) OK maybe I should say "An Nth generational copy can be as good as the master." Certainly a file ripped from CD is identical (bit per bit) to the "master" copy used to make the CD.

 

[AaronEdwards]

What this should tell anyone with a business degree: There is great demand for your product but it is priced wrong.

Draw a graph of price vs. unit sales. We know two points on the graph. At "list price" ($16??) we know the units sales is 10,000 units. At $0.00 (free except for the effort to download it) the unit sales is 80,000.

One might assume that at price between $16 and $0 there would be unit sales between 10K and 80K. The million dollar question is this: How many would you sell if the list price was $4 or $6 or $12. Look at two options:

1) List price of $4, 50,000 units sold is $200,000 in sales
2) List price $16, 10,000 units sold is $160,000 in sales.

If the above right and he really would make more money by lowering the price then he's priced the product wrong.

I'm pretty sure the only way to save to CD industry is to get prices in line with what there customers can pay. I'd say CDs for under $10 would actually bring in more money in total.

I'm sorry. But this major faulty thinking. You would need to know a lot more points to graph it in any way correctly. And in reality you don't even have one point. The company has for some records only sold 10,000 copies, but you don't know the price. Nor can you just add 80,000 and $0 as another point, since there are obvious differences in distribution, accessibility, and legality among other things.

 

[blybug]

"Matched songs upgraded to 256 kbps AAC DRM-free"

OK I'll be a real pedant for a moment and admit that I didn't see that slide when typing out the transcript, I was only listening and Jobs never said "AAC DRM-free." But you're right, it's on the slide. However, the 18 million 256kbps AAC files sitting on Apple's cloud are indeed DRM free. There is still no clear statement that a copy of this file will be delivered to you to do with as you please, but it will be "played back."

Why didn't Jobs say exactly these words: "We know a lot of our customers have been wanting to upgrade copies of songs they had ripped from CDs in lower bitrate MP3 when digital music first began, or even some old 128kbps iTunes content with DRM, Napster, Rhapsody, Amazon MP3 whatever. But this gets expensive, and especially annoying when you've already bought that music, you just haven't had the time to re-rip or the 30 cents or buck twenty-nine per song to make the move. Well, with iTunes Match we're doing it for you."

Then show a slide with $0.30 price tag for upgrade to iTunes Plus - obliterated in a puff of smoke transition. Then show $0.99 and $1.29 price tags for buying new copies - obliterated. Sparkly transition entrance of $24.95 per month price tag..."We're going to give you the full iTunes Plus 256kbps AAC file that we have for every single song in your entire iTunes library that you didn't originally buy from us. To keep. To download and re-download. Forever. Every. Single. Song. For only $24.95 per year."

Sorry, that just doesn't fly. He specifically said "Same benefits as music purchased from iTunes". Purchased music can be loaded to a nano or burned to CD. Or even loaded to a device and played where network connection isn't available. If it's a streaming service and those aren't possible, that statement isn't "carefully parsed", it's flat out false. So you're saying Jobs made intentionally false statements as part of the introduction?

He may indeed have to clarify exactly what he meant by some of his intro stuff, and if you read the description on Apple's web page carefully it actually is less comprehensive and inclusive, and more vague about how this all works than the Jobs was in the keynote. I think they'll claim the "benefits" are the same in the iCloud context, not necessarily in the "old fashioned" iTunes/burning/non-iOS gadgets context. The rollout and information provided as the time comes closer is going to have to be very carefully orchestrated. This says it all to me right here:

Since there are more than 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.​

"Your music is probably already in iCloud" and it "plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality." Again, why not scream from the trees on this promotional website that Apple is about to give ridiculously cheap amnesty to every file trader and CD burner with unlimited downloads of songs that are otherwise $1.29 apiece, if that's what is going to happen? And if it only takes "minutes" to match my songs, clearly iTunes Match is not going to "listen" to them like SoundHound/Midomi. It's going to use my iTunes Library xml file and the available metadata. So what is to keep anybody from creating blank MP3s full of static of the correct length and tag them as any song they want to get it from iTunes?

And again, why say "drm free" for a streamed song or a file that has limitations? Limitations that would seem an awful lot like DRM.

Most advantageous would be to leave with your device full then delete material you've heard and replace it with fresh stuff on the road. Hopefully apple will include some smart functionality that allows syncing playlists and not having to manually manage individual songs.

You can get the songs and then continue to play them even when a network connection is not available.

I guess I may end up regretting insisting on the word "streaming," especially since it's unlikely that Apple will ever call it that. So the matched song "downloads" to your iPhone if a copy is not already stored locally. Does it start playing before it's done downloading, or do you wait for it to download? Is that streaming or downloading? Six and a half dozen of the other. Does it stay on your iPhone or disappear when it's done playing and have to be downloaded again? You're probably right it will stay there so you can play it again later off network until you delete it.

The spirit of what I have been trying to say, however, is that whatever the Apple-elegant method of magical revolutionary iCloud "play back" on an untethered iDevice, that file will not become yours and will not sync or download back to your mothership computer unless it is iTunes purchased content. Songs that are only "matched" are played one way or another via Apple's master copy, and will remain walled off inside the file-systemless iDevice, not become your property back in iTunes on the computer. I am sure Apple will place a prominent BUY button on all such songs to encourage the continued steady flow of $1.29 in their tiller.

Which has no basis in any evidence, just your personal theory with no facts to back it up. If that were the case, how am I able to load that song to a nano or burn it to CD?

I think my interpretation of the information/evidence that has been given at the keynote and on Apple's web page is more reasonable and more realistic than believing that Apple is about to hand over more than $15,000 worth of digital song files to me for $25 simply because they happen to already be in my iTunes from unknown sources (much as I would love that). If that's really what they are going to do, why aren't they explicitly advertising that all over creation? The fact that they are remaining low key and using terms like "plays back" is good evidence that they are rolling out a subscription service that streams/downloads songs from the cloud, but they are sugar coating it and avoiding using those words just yet.

This is the cloud era. iPod nanos and shuffles are not included. Apple famously moves forward and leaves legacy technology behind. Burning to CDs and USB syncing to click-wheel iPods is all very 1990s and 2000s. This implementation is a 2011 version of what will be ubiquitous in 2020. Your iPod Touch becomes a pocketable battery-powered AppleTV with your playlists in the iCloud as its source material.

Listen at 256 Kbps. Play back matched songs at iTunes Plus quality. Even if your original copy was of lower quality.
≠
Replace your lower quality ripped CD or Amazon MP3 or Napster-obtained copy with the official iTunes Store 256kbps AAC file.

 

[Jerome Morrow]

If someone stole the music what difference does it make what are iTunes Match specifications.

 

[the8thark]

I see it like this.

There is only 2 ways to try and get music pirating to stop or slow down.
1. Go heavy handed and sue as many people/companies as you can. To shut down the ways people can pirate music.
2. Make the ways to legally get music so extremely easy that moat people will be like "should I spend hours looking for the track I want or spend 1 minute getting it legally". The time is money idea.

And 2 things we know. Method 1 has proven not to work in the past. People sill pirate today. And Apple is trying for method 2.

And people think $25 is not much. But it's more then the $0 you got from the pirates. And the Little Music people complain about this. Well if their music was easier to get a hold of, people would not pirate it. We all know of that one track or CD you just can not get legally anymore. Out of print and never pops up on ebay and not on itunes. So pirating that is not so bad in many people's eyes. Simply cause there is no way to legally get it. If Little Music made some of their music easier to legally acquire I think more people would.

Little Music just need to move into the 21st century and make their catalogues easy to legally acquire and there'd be no issue.

 

[AaronEdwards]

I see it like this.

There is only 2 ways to try and get music pirating to stop or slow down.
1. Go heavy handed and sue as many people/companies as you can. To shut down the ways people can pirate music.
2. Make the ways to legally get music so extremely easy that moat people will be like "should I spend hours looking for the track I want or spend 1 minute getting it legally". The time is money idea.

And 2 things we know. Method 1 has proven not to work in the past. People sill pirate today. And Apple is trying for method 2.

And people think $25 is not much. But it's more then the $0 you got from the pirates. And the Little Music people complain about this. Well if their music was easier to get a hold of, people would not pirate it. We all know of that one track or CD you just can not get legally anymore. Out of print and never pops up on ebay and not on itunes. So pirating that is not so bad in many people's eyes. Simply cause there is no way to legally get it. If Little Music made some of their music easier to legally acquire I think more people would.

Little Music just need to move into the 21st century and make their catalogues easy to legally acquire and there'd be no issue.

$25 is what a record company gets for selling like 4 cds... Sure, 25 is more than 0, but it's a lot closer to 0 than what the record company (and the artist) would get for actually selling the music.

Actually, the best attempt at the second option today is to offer a streaming service. It's easier and faster than both illegal downloading and buying, and you don't have to decide whether to buy a certain record or not, it's all already there for you.

Apple should do that, but since they make billions from selling songs, I doubt they will in the foreseeable future.

 

[SpinThis!]

Putting aside the piracy issue for a moment, a lot of Rob Sevier's complaint comes from the murky copyright agreements in effect regarding replication. If iTunes Match is only paying a fraction of what it could cost in potential replication fees, the label could very well end up losing money.

From the ARS article:
At issue is the byzantine network of music publishers, which are given what's called a mechanical reproduction royalty any time a song or record is duplicated. Any time a record label sells a CD or LP, the label has to distribute 9.1¢ to the music publishing companies, which then redistribute the money (after taking their cut) to songwriters.

There's no law or ruling from the RAB that says that making copies available via cloud services doesn't make record labels culpable for replication royalties. "Right now the only thing that is binding that says this isn't 'replication' is Apple's word," Sevier explained. "We're saying we're not sure that just because Apple says that making this available on ten computers is OK that it's not actually making copies."

Many indie artists in genres such as pop, folk, and rock write, record, and publish their own songs. In the case of soul music, though, artists often performed songs written by one or more other songwriters. So for a 10-track album, Numero may be beholden to 10 or more publishing companies for mechanical royalties.

Just because the label is opting out now doesn't mean they're opting out forever. If and when the waters become clearer, they'll likely opt back in when there's no risk and you know exactly what your liability is.

It's really getting tiring seeing all these knee-jerk reactions from folks who don't read the whole story.

 

[Sjhonny]

Here in Belgium, and most likely in quite a bit of EU countries, there're these laws concerning something called "Home Copies".

Bottom line: Downloading is perfectly legal, it's the uploading and the making available of copyrighted material, without permission, that is illegal. So site's like Mediafire, Rapidshare or Megaupload can host illegal content, but downloading this content is perfectly legal ^^ . This also means that illegal downloaded songs don't exist here.

 

[milo]

There is still no clear statement that a copy of this file will be delivered to you to do with as you please, but it will be "played back."

If "Matched songs upgraded to 256 kbps AAC DRM-free" and "Same benefits as music purchased from iTunes" aren't a clear statement that you'll get a copy of the file with which you can do what you please, then I don't know what is.

And I still don't see how your streaming scenario reconciles with either of those two quotes - you're still saying that those statements are false.

They didn't specifically talk about the 30 cent upgrade going away because it would piss off all those who paid it when people are now going to get it for free (and yeah, those people are and will continue to be pissed).

I think they'll claim the "benefits" are the same in the iCloud context, not necessarily in the "old fashioned" iTunes/burning/non-iOS gadgets context.

Seems unlikely since they made the statement "Same benefits as music purchased from iTunes". And even in the cloud context, music purchased from iTunes is downloaded, not streamed. If they went out of their way to say that Match music behaves the same as purchased music, then wouldn't the new cloud beta for purchased music be streamed as well instead of having two different methods?

"Your music is probably already in iCloud" and it "plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality."

And these both make perfect sense in the case of downloads, neither is any more applicable to streaming.

So what is to keep anybody from creating blank MP3s full of static of the correct length and tag them as any song they want to get it from iTunes?

I suspect nothing. But doing that probably isn't any more work than just pirating the songs in the first place.

I guess I may end up regretting insisting on the word "streaming," especially since it's unlikely that Apple will ever call it that. So the matched song "downloads" to your iPhone if a copy is not already stored locally. Does it start playing before it's done downloading, or do you wait for it to download? Is that streaming or downloading? Six and a half dozen of the other. Does it stay on your iPhone or disappear when it's done playing and have to be downloaded again? You're probably right it will stay there so you can play it again later off network until you delete it.

You'll probably end up regretting calling it streaming because it will turn out to be downloads just like the ones we have already.

that file will not become yours and will not sync or download back to your mothership computer unless it is iTunes purchased content.

Which has nothing to support it but your own speculation and is contradicted by the available info from Apple.

Songs that are only "matched" are played one way or another via Apple's master copy, and will remain walled off inside the file-systemless iDevice, not become your property back in iTunes on the computer. I am sure Apple will place a prominent BUY button on all such songs to encourage the continued steady flow of $1.29 in their tiller.

"Walled off"? Downloading a file but then having strict limitations about what device it's on sounds exactly like DRM. And the whole point of Match is that it gives the benefit of the doubt that users are legal. That's people who have already paid to buy a song, why would they even try to get someone to buy again when the whole point is that it's a service for songs you've already bought?

I think my interpretation of the information/evidence that has been given at the keynote and on Apple's web page is more reasonable and more realistic...

Yeah, we get it, you think you're right and everyone else is wrong. No need to keep repeating that endlessly. But your interpretation is in complete contradiction with what Apple has said.

Apple says "Same benefits as music purchased from iTunes". You say much fewer benefits, basically calling that statement a lie.

Apple says "Matched songs upgraded to 256 kbps AAC DRM-free". You say song files not upgraded and if there are downloads they will have highly restrictive DRM. Again, you're saying their statement was a lie.

Is it possible Apple and Jobs were lying? Sure, anything is possible but claiming that you know better and that Apple must be making false statements just because it doesn't SEEM right to you is ridiculous.

This is the cloud era. iPod nanos and shuffles are not included.

So again, you're saying "Same benefits as music purchased from iTunes" is a lie. Sorry, but if you're going to keep claiming that the things they said at a major product introduction were false it's going to take more evidence than that.

Listen at 256 Kbps. Play back matched songs at iTunes Plus quality. Even if your original copy was of lower quality.
≠
Replace your lower quality ripped CD or Amazon MP3 or Napster-obtained copy with the official iTunes Store 256kbps AAC file.

You don't listen or play back with a download? And they also use the term "upgrade". How would streaming be an upgrade?

 

[Sjhonny]

Apple should do that, but since they make billions from selling songs, I doubt they will in the foreseeable future.

They definitely don't. They sold 15 Billion total, over a period of 8 years. There's no significant growth anymore (except the Beatles sales recently, which resulted in a short bump I think), so let's say they sold in 2010 around 3 Billion songs. That's a revenue of 3 Billion USD Tops (not accounting album sale reductions or voucher agreements with other companies). And I doubt they'll keep more then 30% of that themselves, that's without hosting cost's, iTunes development costs, PR, costumers support, taxes, etc. .

I think there breaking even and enjoying (very) healthy profit margins on the i-devices (invers strategy of Sony and MS with there PS3 and Xbox)

 

[Michael Scrip]

I think my interpretation of the information/evidence that has been given at the keynote and on Apple's web page is more reasonable and more realistic than believing that Apple is about to hand over more than $15,000 worth of digital song files to me for $25 simply because they happen to already be in my iTunes from unknown sources (much as I would love that). If that's really what they are going to do, why aren't they explicitly advertising that all over creation? The fact that they are remaining low key and using terms like "plays back" is good evidence that they are rolling out a subscription service that streams/downloads songs from the cloud, but they are sugar coating it and avoiding using those words just yet.

Even if iCloud didn't exist... you already have $15,000 worth of music on your computer.

With or without Apple.... you already have those songs in your possession. And if you pay $25 a year... Apple will give you another copy of those songs to sync wirelessly. (remember... Apple isn't giving you free music... they are giving you duplicates of the songs you already have)

If you don't pay... you can continue syncing your $15,000 worth of music with a USB cable like you always have. It doesn't affect Apple in the least.

Apple has always let you rip the CDs you already own... completely skirting the iTunes Store. They clearly didn't have a problem with that either.

You're right... Apple is using words like "play back"... and they don't specifically use the words "streaming" or "downloading"

But... they were very clear by saying "Matched music has the same benefits as purchased music... for $25"

That's the biggest piece of the puzzle. What other benefits are there... if being able to download is the most important part?

Plus... you can upload anything that iTunes can't match. What good is uploading if you can't download your own songs again?

I think the biggest question here is... do you think a real pirate is gonna give Apple any money to legitimize their songs? No... they're gonna keep doing what they always have. They're not gonna bother with this...

This service is for Apple customers... to make it easy to manage their music on multiple devices wirelessly... some iTunes purchases and a handful of CDs.

So let's be honest... you're an edge case. 90% of Apple's customers do not have 94GB of music.

 

[Loge]

This is the cloud era. iPod nanos and shuffles are not included. Apple famously moves forward and leaves legacy technology behind..

Legacy technology? Nanos and shuffles were updated last September and will almost certainly be updated again this September. There will have to be a way for these Match files to be played on those devices.

And I don't think there will be a "Buy" button either. This service is for stuff you bought already (just not from Apple). If you really want to buy the songs again you can already do that without paying the $25.

 

[hfg]

So if you're away home away from your computer being able to re-download the song to your device via the cloud isn't as easy as streaming it?

If I want to change the content of my iPod while away from my computer, I can simply pop into a WiFi coffee shop and fairly quickly download several days worth of listening while I drink my coffee. They I can leave and enjoy the music for a few days before I have to do that again.

If it were streaming only, I would have to stay in the coffee shop while I listened to the music in real time ... and my system doesn't need that much coffee!

 

[blybug]

You don't listen or play back with a download?

No. This has been called "purchasing a song" since the iTunes store opened.

Milo, you make a lot of good points. I'm still not convinced but I guess we'll all know soon enough.

You did a credible job of addressing or refuting my arguments point by point, but chose to skip this one:

Why didn't Jobs say exactly these words: "We know a lot of our customers have been wanting to upgrade copies of songs they had ripped from CDs in lower bitrate MP3 when digital music first began, or even some old 128kbps iTunes content with DRM, Napster, Rhapsody, Amazon MP3 whatever. But this gets expensive, and especially annoying when you've already bought that music, you just haven't had the time to re-rip or the 30 cents or buck twenty-nine per song to make the move. Well, with iTunes Match we're doing it for you."

Then show a slide with $0.30 price tag for upgrade to iTunes Plus - obliterated in a puff of smoke transition. Then show $0.99 and $1.29 price tags for buying new copies - obliterated. Sparkly transition entrance of $24.95 per month price tag..."We're going to give you the full iTunes Plus 256kbps AAC file that we have for every single song in your entire iTunes library that you didn't originally buy from us. To keep. To download and re-download. Forever. Every. Single. Song. For only $24.95 per year."

If it's so crystal clear that this is Apple's intent, then why wasn't it presented this way, and why does the website not explain it this way? Why all the boardroom doublespeak about "benefits of purchased music" and "listen and play back matches at iTunes Plus quality"?

If the service truly is a virtually free upgrade to iTunes Plus for all the CD ripping (and amnesty for all the music stealing) of the past decade, this should be revolutionary front page news that Apple trots out to vanquish Amazon and Google's second-rate offerings once and for all.

 

[Michael Scrip]

If it's so crystal clear that this is Apple's intent, then why wasn't it presented this way, and why does the website not explain it this way? Why all the boardroom doublespeak about "benefits of purchased music" and "listen and play back matches at iTunes Plus quality"?

If the service truly is a virtually free upgrade to iTunes Plus for all the CD ripping (and amnesty for all the music stealing) of the past decade, this should be revolutionary front page news that Apple trots out to vanquish Amazon and Google's second-rate offerings once and for all.

Apple probably doesn't want to come out and say "bring all your Limewire music to us to legalize it"

Remember... Apple just wrote the record companies a $150 million check to be able to do this in the first place.

I'm sure the record companies have their own set of requests... like careful wording.

You're right... this would be front-page news if this was advertised as legal music laundering.

While I, and many other people here, believe that this is what Apple is doing... Apple still has to play by the record companies' rules.

I just don't think Apple would have spent all that time at WWDC talking in detail about iTunes Match... and announced a price for it... if they secretly had streaming plan in the works.

I mean... iTunes Match isn't coming out for another 3 months... surely they could have whipped up some kind of presentation for a streaming service... if that's what they were doing...

 

[chris975d]

Apple probably doesn't want to come out and say "bring all your Limewire music to us to legalize it"

Remember... Apple just wrote the record companies a $150 million check to be able to do this in the first place.

I'm sure the record companies have their own set of requests... like careful wording.

You're right... this would be front-page news if this was advertised as legal music laundering.

While I, and many other people here, believe that this is what Apple is doing... Apple still has to play by the record companies' rules.

I just don't think Apple would have spent all that time at WWDC talking in detail about iTunes Match... and announced a price for it... if they secretly had streaming plan in the works.

I mean... iTunes Match isn't coming out for another 3 months... surely they could have whipped up some kind of presentation for a streaming service... if that's what they were doing...

I think this is a pretty reasonable assumption. Why on earth would the record companies agree to this deal if Apple was going to approach the advertising that way? As you state, I'm sure that Apple had to agree to many things to get this deal passed, and one of those would be to CAREFULLY word it so that, even though it is a service that can launder pirated music, it doesn't sound that way in advertising.

 

[AaronEdwards]

They definitely don't. They sold 15 Billion total, over a period of 8 years. There's no significant growth anymore (except the Beatles sales recently, which resulted in a short bump I think), so let's say they sold in 2010 around 3 Billion songs. That's a revenue of 3 Billion USD Tops (not accounting album sale reductions or voucher agreements with other companies). And I doubt they'll keep more then 30% of that themselves, that's without hosting cost's, iTunes development costs, PR, costumers support, taxes, etc. .

I think there breaking even and enjoying (very) healthy profit margins on the i-devices (invers strategy of Sony and MS with there PS3 and Xbox)

From Wikipedia and the latest WWDC I get these numbers

250 million songs sold: January 24, 2005
850 million songs sold: January 10, 2006 (1.7 million songs/day)
2 billion songs sold: January 10, 2007 (3.2 million songs/day +84%)
4 billion songs sold: January 15, 2008 (5.4 million songs/day +72%)
6 billion songs sold: January 6, 2009 (5.6 million songs/day +4%)
10 billion songs sold: February 24, 2010 (9.7 million songs/day +72%)
15 billion songs sold: June 7, 2011 (10.7 million songs/day +11%)

I think you're grossly overestimating the cost Apple has for providing this. They are doing far, far better than just breaking even. They are making a huge profit on this.

 

[AaronEdwards]

Apple probably doesn't want to come out and say "bring all your Limewire music to us to legalize it"

Remember... Apple just wrote the record companies a $150 million check to be able to do this in the first place.

$150 million is what the records companies get for 20 days of iTunes Store sales. It's peanuts.

 

[blybug]

I think this is a pretty reasonable assumption. Why on earth would the record companies agree to this deal if Apple was going to approach the advertising that way? As you state, I'm sure that Apple had to agree to many things to get this deal passed, and one of those would be to CAREFULLY word it so that, even though it is a service that can launder pirated music, it doesn't sound that way in advertising.

Or, I would contend, CAREFULLY word it and set up the system so that the experience will be virtually indistinguishable from the traditional iTunes experience of "downloading" and "owning" the song, but in fact it is "listening" to the iTunes Store version of the file which "plays back" at 256kbps quality as if it were your own. Apple is tiptoeing around something here...remains to be seen what...

Overall, this sounds much more like something the record companies would actually agree to.