Apple Showed The Record Labels How To Make Money From Stolen Music

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-06-07/tech/30096591_1_itunes-steve-jobs-amazon-and-google#ixzz1cbfOu16Q

iTunes Match will scan users' iTunes libraries, then find matches in the songs that Apple has for sale in the iTunes Store. Then, it will let users download those songs to any iOS device or computer running iTunes. The price is $25 per year.

For songs that iTunes can't recognize, users can still upload them to their personal iCloud service, which is free up to 5GB. Then they can get the files directly from iCloud to their other devices.

The key point: it doesn't matter where the song originally came from.

Maybe you ripped it yourself -- Steve Jobs was careful to emphasize this scenario in the keynote. Or maybe you got it as an email attachment, from a CD that a friend ripped, from a Web site or file-trading service, or from a swapped thumb drive.

As long as the song has metadata (information like artist, title, and album associated with the file) in a format that iTunes can read -- which it probably does if it's already in your iTunes library -- then Match should be able to recognize it and offer you a copy.

As CEO Jeff Price of Tunecore points out, Apple is paying royalties to record labels and publishers to cover this user behavior.

Amazon and Google introduced music lockers -- a similar concept, but they require users to upload every song manually -- but they're not paying the industry a dime.

In other words, Apple just built the service that lets the record industry FINALLY make money from pirated music.

This is something the record industry should have done itself 10 years ago when Napster emerged, instead of suing its customers to try and stop them from sharing music, it should have figured out how to make money off them.

It took Apple to show the labels that digital music downloads could be a good business. Now, it's going to take Apple to show them how to make money from digital files that users never paid for.

I wasn't sure where to put this topic, so MODs feel free to put it where it needs to go.


I think this is a cool concept and a great way for those record companies and bands to try and make up for those stolen royalties.....if this works as explained.

The big downside is the yearly subscription. I seriously do not want yet another service from anyone that I have to pay for.

It's ok in here IMO.

I read it.

Only thought was, sometimes I hate technology!

I buy music worth thousands each year, so how are the artists gonna make money off of me I cut down to only 25? Doesn't make sense at all.

I don't get it.

...but then, I don't use iTunes either. So I guess this is irrelevant to my life.

kmorg wrote:

I buy music worth thousands each year, so how are the artists gonna make money off of me I cut down to only 25? Doesn't make sense at all.

You wouldn't be cutting down to only $25 I don't think. I think the $25 goes towards the matching, syncing, and iCloud service, not for buying music. So if I understand this right, if you did buy a physical cd, you'd pay that charge, then if you had this matching service and you ripped the cd to your computer and allowed the matching service to do its trick, then when that matching service recognized that song it would then kick some extra cash towards whoever's pocket its supposed to go to.

But if someone had a bunch of stolen music and then signed up for this matching service for some reason, it would then give whatever royalties they've set up to go back to the artist/record company. So in essence, the artist/record company might actually make some money on the stolen songs where they wouldn't have before.

But what I can't understand is, if someone is cheap enough to steal music to begin with, why would they sign up for the service in the first place?

Taken from Apple's page

Quote :

If you want the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud for music you haven’t purchased from iTunes, iTunes Match is the perfect solution. It’s built right into the iTunes app on your Mac or PC and the Music app on your iOS devices. And it lets you store your entire collection, including music you’ve imported from CDs or purchased somewhere other than iTunes. For just $24.99 a year.2

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library. Since there are more than 20 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. Once your music is in iCloud, you can stream and store it on any of your devices. Even better, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

I think I'm understanding this better now. If you've bought a song from the iTunes store, it is automatically in your "cloud" and synced up with whatever device. But if you have a load of songs from where ever in the world you got it, instead of buying/rebuying ALL those songs from the iTunes store at a million bucks, it would allow you to pay a fee of $25 a year for iTunes to assume you bought the songs legally and match them up with possibly better quality versions for a fraction of the cost.....depending on your habits.

I'm probably not explaining this well though.

But I could totally see this being abused big time. Say I go on the torrent sites and download a 1000 songs at whatever quality, good or bad, then I pay only $25 for iTunes Match to give me a good quality file in exchange. I'd have a lot of songs in high quality iTunes format for the fraction of the cost that it would normally be.

The artists still get peanuts, no matter what.

I'm a bit lost.

How I read it, it looks like its saying you need to get the MP3 from the Ipod store for you to even use it.

Temple of Blood wrote:

The artists still get peanuts, no matter what.

Peanuts is better than the empty bag.

S.D. wrote:

Temple of Blood wrote:

The artists still get peanuts, no matter what.

Peanuts is better than the empty bag.

Not really, if it's only one peanut.

Reminds me of Lady Gaga and her gi-normous check from Spotify.

This is an interesting proposition. I am very seriously considering going all digital and if Apple is going to pay the labels and artists I may subscribe and stop buying cds.

kmorg wrote:

I buy music worth thousands each year, so how are the artists gonna make money off of me I cut down to only 25? Doesn't make sense at all.

This is because the artists don't get anything, its just some collateral cash for the label/publisher. It probably wont benefit every label either, but just few selected top-of-the-chain corporate mega-sharks. I may be wrong though, I'm just thinking aloud here.

From what I understand, it is a flat fee, and I seriously doubt iTunes would bother dividing royalties accordingly - they most probably will be forwarding part of that fee to "record labels". Which labels and how the spoils will be shared is anyone's guess I suppose.

In any case, if it works as described, this means one can pay $25, then simply go and download everything he wants and own it legally - voila! Sounds pretty fishy to me, given most of the downloaders accumulate hundreds, if not thousands of albums per year.

stormspell wrote:

kmorg wrote:

I buy music worth thousands each year, so how are the artists gonna make money off of me I cut down to only 25? Doesn't make sense at all.

This is because the artists don't get anything, its just some collateral cash for the label/publisher. It probably wont benefit every label either, but just few selected top-of-the-chain corporate mega-sharks. I may be wrong though, I'm just thinking aloud here.

From what I understand, it is a flat fee, and I seriously doubt iTunes would bother dividing royalties accordingly - they most probably will be forwarding part of that fee to "record labels". Which labels and how the spoils will be shared is anyone's guess I suppose.

In any case, if it works as described, this means one can pay $25, then simply go and download everything he wants and own it legally - voila! Sounds pretty fishy to me, given most of the downloaders accumulate hundreds, if not thousands of albums per year.

it does have that ring of too good to be true to it.

The way it is explained in the last Aplle quote it looks like Apple wants your money to store the music they can't provide for you. Not all artists are in iTunes, and now Aplle can make money off of them too!