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Apple offers Music Pirates Amenesty... for $25

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It's not just streaming, my understanding is that iCloud will allow you to download any music that has been uploaded or matched. Similar to Amazon Cloud and Google Music, it's a digital music locker service, not just a streaming service. You can store your music in the cloud and re-download it if you happen to lose your local copy or something like that.

My understanding is that iTunes purchases can be re-downloaded now at no cost. The $25/year match service will allow you to do the same, but with non-iTunes purchases (music you've ripped yourself, downloaded from other services, etc.). I've read that the downloads from the match service will be DRM-free, but I don't know if this has been confirmed. I don't see why they wouldn't now that iTunes has been DRM-free for a while, though.
 
Ns1 said:
this

not seeing where you can DL physically. I presume it's streaming from the cloud.

"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 for you to listen to anytime, on any device. 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."
Click to expand...

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/06/wwdc-2011-liveblog-steve-jobs-talks-ios-5-os-x-lion-icloud-an/

Scroll down to ~2:55pm. The slide clearly states "matched songs upgraded to 256kbps aac drm-free"
 
gorcorps said:
Only saving grace? Ha... unless I missed something, portable Apple cloud only works on Apple devices. Just fyi, not everybody has apple products or would ever want one. AFAIC the people that will use Apple cloud are people that Apple has secured as customers already.
Click to expand...

It will work on PC.
 
I know a lot of the blame likely falls on poor reporting and I don't know the context in which Apple presented the iCloud, but I have to say that I find the presumption that music not on iTunes is pirated as well as the presumption that music ripped from a CD is pirated as hilarious. Good job reporter/Apple for taking the RIAA stance that making a fair use copy for yourself is stealing.

Oh, and Apple needs to quit with the "i" devices. It's just really stupid now.
 
frostedflakes said:
It's not just streaming, my understanding is that iCloud will allow you to download any music that has been uploaded or matched. Similar to Amazon Cloud and Google Music, it's a digital music locker service, not just a streaming service. You can store your music in the cloud and re-download it if you happen to lose your local copy or something like that.

My understanding is that iTunes purchases can be re-downloaded now at no cost. The $25/year match service will allow you to do the same, but with non-iTunes purchases (music you've ripped yourself, downloaded from other services, etc.). I've read that the downloads from the match service will be DRM-free, but I don't know if this has been confirmed. I don't see why they wouldn't now that iTunes has been DRM-free for a while, though.
Click to expand...

I don't think anything has been said about downloading or redownloading songs that have been matched. That would be a pretty big loophole I would think.

Gooberlx2 said:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/06/wwdc-2011-liveblog-steve-jobs-talks-ios-5-os-x-lion-icloud-an/

Scroll down to ~2:55pm. The slide clearly states "matched songs upgraded to 256kbps aac drm-free"
Click to expand...

I think that just means that if you have a shitty 128 mp3 file, a match in the iCloud would be streamed at 256.
 
gorcorps said:
unless I missed something, portable Apple cloud only works on Apple devices. Just fyi, not everybody has apple products or would ever want one. AFAIC the people that will use Apple cloud are people that Apple has secured as customers already.
Click to expand...


Works on iTunes.

Last i checked... iTunes worked on a PC. I wouldn't call my Windows 7 PC an "apple product" .. nor would i call myself an "apple customer" .. i haven't bought shit from them.
 
Some people are mentioning streaming - did Apple ever mention streaming? I haven't watched the video, but I don't remember reading anything about streaming music, and they don't mention streaming music in their press release: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/06/06icloud.html

What they do mention a lot is downloading and syncing. My impression is that iCloud will be a conduit through which all of your devices will be (or can be) kept in sync with the same content on each device, but the content will be stored on the devices (as well as in iCloud) rather than being streamed from iCloud on-demand.

So from what I understand, you will be able to use iTunes Match to identify legally obtained music from other sources, and if it is music that is sold in the iTunes store you will gain access to Apple's copy of the song through iCloud, and from there it could be downloaded to any device. What is not clear is whether you would lose access to that music in iCloud if you don't renew your subscription. If you do, it doesn't matter much because you could have already downloaded it (DRM-free). You'll just lose the benefits of iCloud for that music (wireless syncing).
 
mugs said:
Some people are mentioning streaming - did Apple ever mention streaming? I haven't watched the video, but I don't remember reading anything about streaming music, and they don't mention streaming music in their press release: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/06/06icloud.html

What they do mention a lot is downloading and syncing. My impression is that iCloud will be a conduit through which all of your devices will be (or can be) kept in sync with the same content on each device, but the content will be stored on the devices (as well as in iCloud) rather than being streamed from iCloud on-demand.

So from what I understand, you will be able to use iTunes Match to identify legally obtained music from other sources, and if it is music that is sold in the iTunes store you will gain access to Apple's copy of the song through iCloud, and from there it could be downloaded to any device. What is not clear is whether you would lose access to that music in iCloud if you don't renew your subscription. If you do, it doesn't matter much because you could have already downloaded it (DRM-free). You'll just lose the benefits of iCloud for that music (wireless syncing).
Click to expand...

a very good point.
 
abaez said:
I think that just means that if you have a shitty 128 mp3 file, a match in the iCloud would be streamed at 256.
Click to expand...

Ns1 said:
which means your copied files will be 256k, in the cloud?
Click to expand...

No, because it's not a streaming service, it's a syncing service. 256kbps drm-free files will be downloaded to the involved devices.

At least this is the understanding from all the tech blogs I've read. If it was streaming, they wouldn't have to mention DRM at all.

edit: I see mugs pointed that out.
 
James Bond said:
It will work on PC.
Click to expand...

guyver01 said:
Works on iTunes.

Last i checked... iTunes worked on a PC. I wouldn't call my Windows 7 PC an "apple product" .. nor would i call myself an "apple customer" .. i haven't bought shit from them.
Click to expand...

Guys... I said PORTABLE Apple cloud for a reason. PORTABLE as in easy to carry along with you. You know, like phones and mp3 players. However, this was my belief when I thought it was streaming. If it's downloading from a PC then it might be able to run on other things, but it's still going to be AAC correct? That still limits you quite a bit in the PORTABLE department.
 
what's to keep someone from downloading 5000 illegal albums pay $25 bucks and have apple match it on the cloud ?
 
Whoever wrote the last line of that is an idiot who totally missed the concept. If it's in the cloud, you can ACCESS it only as long as they let you. Just because it's accessible on a particular device doesn't mean it's forever available to that device.

It doesn't even need to be stored in the cloud for that to happen. Remember subscription music?
 
isekii said:
what's to keep someone from downloading 5000 illegal albums pay $25 bucks and have apple match it on the cloud ?
Click to expand...

Honor? I dunno what Apple expects to do to counter this kind of thing. Possibly the stance that pirates aren't going to pay for their music anyway, so this at least gives some portion of $25 to the industry.

As I said in the Apple forum, I've got some really old rips for CDs I've since lost in moves. It'll be nice to upgrade the fidelity of those files, but how does one determine me to be legit vs someone else as a pirate?
 
isekii said:
what's to keep someone from downloading 5000 illegal albums pay $25 bucks and have apple match it on the cloud ?
Click to expand...

What's to keep someone from downloading 5000 albums and doing nothing more? You don't NEED to convert your pirated music to AAC, and you certainly wouldn't have a hard time finding pirated music that is higher quality than 256k AAC (e.g. lossless).

So what does a pirate gain by storing all of their pirated music in iCloud? Nothing more than any other iCloud user gains. Having Apple match your pirated music doesn't suddenly make it legit. Apple simply took the only practical approach here, the same approach that Amazon and presumably Google are taking - accept all music, don't care where it came from. What is pirated is pirated, what is legit is legit, and the responsibility for pirated music lies with the user.
 
isekii said:
what's to keep someone from downloading 5000 illegal albums pay $25 bucks and have apple match it on the cloud ?
Click to expand...

Nothing but they have to keep paying yearly and the record companies are getting their cut... or didn't you hear about all the contract negotiations Apple, Amazon, and Google have been trying to make (or not) with the record companies over their competing services?

Making more money off of pirates AND legitimate customers (you may have ripped those tracks just the same)? Of course the record companies are going to allow it.
 
PokerGuy said:
Once your stuff is "in the cloud", there's nothing preventing apple or any other crappy cloud service provider from holding your stuff for ransom when they change their TOS at some later point. No thanks, I'll hold on to my own stuff. Free.
Click to expand...

QFT. All this cloud stuff sounds like a subscription music service to me. I already paid for my music, I can handle syncing and backing it up on my own, thank you.

I won't bother with the clouds until I am shown a compelling reason to do so.
 
Ns1 said:
I'm just sayin the time spent backing up/syncing/managing multiple libraries is worth at least $25.
Click to expand...

yeah i probably should have replied instead to the same post to which you replied. i just wanted to respond to everyone who says they don't want to pay for music they've already purchased.
 
edro said:
I wonder how they check versions of songs.
Do they simply check Artist, Album, Track info from the mp3 tag?
Click to expand...
most likely a combo of the metadata and also the type of fingerprinting that Shazam does.

A lot of these replies seem to have missed that Apple did not announce music streaming yesterday as part of iCloud. So unlike Amazon's cloud player, the cloud is used simply to auto-sync devices. DRM-free tracks will indeed be downloaded to iOS devices. It's currently unknown if iCloud will feature streaming as an option.

For now it does sound like an amnesty program. It's a gray area since as mugs pointed out, legally you can't argue that music you've violated copyrights on was ever "legit" to begin with. However, considering the record labels are reportedly getting the bulk of iTunes Match revenue (how about artists??), can they really argue with a straight face that an iTunes user paying $25/yr is still stealing music?
 
gorcorps said:
Only saving grace? Ha... unless I missed something, portable Apple cloud only works on Apple devices. Just fyi, not everybody has apple products or would ever want one. AFAIC the people that will use Apple cloud are people that Apple has secured as customers already.
Click to expand...

I don't own an Apple device, and the web site says

Access from iPhone, Android and other mobile devices

so I can (and will) use it on my Android phone.
 
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