Is this perpetual? For example, could I pay my yearly subscription fee, torrent anything I want, upload it and get a legit version? If so, this is $25 a year for all the music I want.<p>Which, if the labels have agreed to that, it's very surprising. It's sort of a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" strategy: they start getting a cut of this fee from every participating pirate, which is a lot more than they used to get ($0), but a lot less than they wish they could get ($15 per album).
What I am curious about is if there would be anything stopping someone from paying the $25 once to convert all of their previously pirated tracks to "legit" 256 kbps AAC tracks...this seems strange to me.
mp3.com tried something very similar without music industry permission in 2000. It was brash and very forward thinking; they pre-ripped a ton of stuff, would identify your CD when you put it in and then unlock it for you to be played through the site. My buddy's brother was working there at the time and when he told me they were trying this, my immediate reaction was "They are gonna get sued into oblivion." Which, of course, they did.<p><a href="http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-235953.html" rel="nofollow">http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-235953.html</a>
Are the mp3s going to be in the cloud? Or on my hard drive?<p>... because it seems like it would be trivial to "spoof" an mp3 for downloading (take a random mp3, perhaps cut to the correct length, add the correct id3 tags and tell iTunes Match to download it).
This could be actually pretty interesting, though iTunes generally fails to read many tags properly. I wonder if there's a limit to the amount of tracks. I'd definitely pay £20 a year for access to all of my music in the cloud legally, however I'm running Linux and on an Android. I guess it's just a benefit to being in the Apple ecosystem. It'd be wicked if Google did the same thing, and in the UK.
iTunes Match premise: Once a pirate, not always a pirate. Pirates are willing to pay $25 / yr for legit 256 kbps AAC tracks of stuff they already have? And you must keep paying $25/yr in perpetuity for access to these tracks?
Apparently, this is U.S.-only:
<a href="http://twitter.com/#!/adrianweckler/status/77813858793832448" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/#!/adrianweckler/status/77813858793832448</a>
How is this different than what mp3.com was trying to do about 5 year ago (I think it was mp3.com)? I seem to remember them having a service where you could put a CD into your disk drive, have their service recognize the CD and all of the sudden, you had the MP3s.<p>I'm guessing it is b/c this is 5 years later and b/c of Apple's clout, but I could also be missing some nuance.
Ah.. I didn't understand it this way before. I'm not sure how I'm justifying this to myself, as I have never bought an itunes album, haven't bought a physical album since 2004, and don't listen to music on my ipod, but I really do like this. It should cost £15.29, I'm going to expect £20 as a low estimate.
I'm not sure how people are surprised by this. If you already have the track on your hard drive and now you have to PAY to listen to it then Apple isn't really giving you anything you didn't already have (convenience, obviously). It's a nice service, but realize that they have already lost the sale.
This is a treasure trove of marketing information. Apple will know your entire library and what you are listening to and when. Not exactly a privacy concern, but its something they can potentially make money off of somehow.
My iCloud is Youtube, Vevo and other legal services I access from my mobile to my non mobile computing devices. THus and for me I dont understand the hoopla of music in the cloud as it exist ubiquitously now and is free.
This is pretty awesome! It means I can access legally purchased and ripped CD collection via iCloud. I'd happily pay $25/year for that convenience (even though I don't buy CDs anymore, it's all iTunes).
Purchased music won't count against iCloud storage. With that in mind, this is brilliant. Convincing enough to be habit changing. Pandora and Grooveshark apps are the only reasons I might not pay.
I can't believe the fit the Music industry is throwing about Google Music and Amazon CloudDrive but they still made this deal with Apple.<p>Props to Apple. Shows they've got the muscle to get what they want.
Let me correct the title for you
' One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will DOWNGRADE Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year'. There much better.<p>I have my music ripped if VBR at low compression and FLAC. Clearly, itunes isn't dishing out nearly the same quality Music in return