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One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

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Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#41

Post by hopeless »

joebadmo wrote: post #32
billybob wrote: post #16

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. 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 (…

I'm not sure I understand the annual subscription. If I don't renew my subscription, does all my ripped/uploaded music go away? Or do I just lose access to more ripping/uploading?

I'm wondering this too although it's a moot point since iTunes Match will be (yet another) U.S.-only music service

Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#43

Post by ansy »

periferral wrote: post #38

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. 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

Arguably 256 AAC is better than 320 MP3. I doubt FLAC files will even upload to iCloud so you probably have to convert them to something like MP3 or AAC first. That is if you are even seriously considering it.

Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#44

Post by wilschroter »

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.

Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#45

Post by paul9290 »

guelo wrote: post #37
paul9290 wrote: post #27

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.

A lot of youtube music content is not available on mobile devices.

Really i rarely have an issue finding current non popular (Top 40) music via YouTube. If it's a current top 40 song I will find it on Vevo if not found on YouTube.

Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#46

Post by _delirium »

mdasen wrote: post #22
sil3ntmac wrote: post #19

Are the mp3s going to be in the cloud? Or on my hard drive? ... 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).

I'm guessing that they're going to use an audio hash to look at the file and determine what song it is. It's probably more reliable than using ID3 tags which might get mixed up (especially around remixes, live versions, or just generally missing information). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function#Finding_similar_r...

If the audio hash & protocol gets reverse-engineered, though, it'll make filesharing very quick--- instead of having to trade mp3s, you can just email your friend a list of hashes.

Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#48

Post by ChuckMcM »

mdasen wrote: post #31
ChuckMcM wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the curious bit for me as well. So for $25 all my music 'upgrades' to 256 bit AAC, can I replace the MP3's I ripped with 128bit MusicMatchJukebox in '99 and are sitting on my filer? And what is this $25 really paying for? Is Apple empowered by the labels to license me a DRM free digital copy? If I pay the $25 annual fee will it automatically 'upgrade' any songs that come on over a torrent link? Is this reall…

1. Yes, that seems to be what Apple is selling. "You had CDs that you ripped to MP3s with crappy quality a while ago. Pay us $25 and we'll trade your crappy-quality MP3s for 256k AACs." 2. I don't think they're giving you a license. You're supposed to already have a license for the song you already have. Apple is merely replacing a likely lower-quality copy with a higher-quality copy. 3. Doubtful (to the point that I…

"2. I don't think they're giving you a license. You're supposed to already have a license for the song you already have. Apple is merely replacing a likely lower-quality copy with a higher-quality copy."

This is the curious bit. The music companies have argued in the past that I didn't get a license to convert my audio into digital form (aka rip an MP3) when I bought my CDs. So your postulate that 'you already have a license' would not be valid to a company that held I didn't get any rights other than the court stipulated 'archive copy'.

Anyway, I don't know one way or the other. But I have seen other companies take a similar approach unsuccessfully, and its interesting to see how Apple is moving the conversation about digital media along.

Since it would be possible to keep a non-DRM copy in perpetuity on disk, I'm really curious about how this will implement. It seems on its face to be something the music industry is currently very invested in preventing. And frankly I don't think 150M$ + some fraction of $25 one time from iCloud subscribers is going to cut it for them.

Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#49

Post by billybob »

drewcrawford wrote: post #39
billybob wrote: post #16

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. 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 (…

Here's what I don't understand about your (and a lot of people's, I don't mean to pick on you) comments, please help me understand this: Pirated files are not necessarily identifiable as such, not in the digital world. If I download some albums from what.cd, you can't tell they're pirated, maybe I ripped them with the exact same version of LAME. What I'm trying to say is that today, having a pirated file isn't a prop…

No, I see your point. I guess it's an open question for me whether this is a transcoding service or a music license.

Arguably, if I have a crappy MP3, and I pay Apple money, and they give me a version with a higher encoding rate, they have sold me the new bits for that song. Maybe the terms don't say that, but I think one could argue that I've paid for a copy of the song.

In fact, I think that the labels, in an effort to make us repurchase our records as tapes and our tapes as CDs and our CDs as files, have tried to tie the license to the format. So that seems to back the idea that this deal gives me a license for the AAC-formatted file. Whether I had one for the MP3 is irrelevant, right?

And would it be so bad if that's how the law sees it? This could actually be a boon for the recording industry. It could be win-win if pirates decide to do this: they start paying for music, they still get all the music they want, and they shift the distribution burden to BitTorrent and iTunes.

Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#50

Post by count »

drewcrawford wrote: post #39
billybob wrote: post #16

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. 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 (…

Here's what I don't understand about your (and a lot of people's, I don't mean to pick on you) comments, please help me understand this: Pirated files are not necessarily identifiable as such, not in the digital world. If I download some albums from what.cd, you can't tell they're pirated, maybe I ripped them with the exact same version of LAME. What I'm trying to say is that today, having a pirated file isn't a prop…

Once you have a receipt from Apple for the music, you have proof of ownership.

If you accidentally lost the CD between then and the time you get your PC taken away for discovery in a copyright infringement lawsuit, that's plausible deniability.

At least, way more so than just having 2TB of MP3s laying around with no media you ripped them from at all...

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