Apple offers Music Pirates Amenesty... for $25

[guyver01]

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06...s-permanent-amnesty-for-24-99/?source=cnn_bin

If you want all the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud for music you haven't purchased from iTunes, iTunes Match is the perfect solution. It lets you store your entire collection, including music you've ripped from CDs or purchased somewhere other than iTunes. For just $24.99 a year.

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.

Here's my question: Once Apple has replaced all the 5,000 plus non-iTunes songs in my music library with clean 256-Kbps non-DRM copies that are mine, permanently, with all the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud, why would I pay for a second year of the service? The job is done, thank you very much, I'll take it from here.

 

[TheVrolok]

Wow, I totally agree with his last line.

 

[bignateyk]

Where does it say they replace it with non-DRM copies? It looks like it just gives you access to the stuff on the cloud. All the stuff on your computer would remain the same shitty quality.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Since the music is on the iCloud service, just make those songs unavailable til you renew your subscription. I'm assuming that you're not able to download these songs from the service.

 

[Ns1]

Where does it say they replace it with non-DRM copies? It looks like it just gives you access to the stuff on the cloud. All the stuff on your computer would remain the same shitty quality.

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."

 

[xanis]

So that's the catch: You don't actually own the music.

I'm not sure I see the point of this service. The only way I can see this being enticing is if you don't sync your devices often or you're too lazy to do so on a regular basis.

 

[edro]

I wonder how they check versions of songs.
Do they simply check Artist, Album, Track info from the mp3 tag?

 

[gorcorps]

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."

Yup. A cnn tech writer who doesn't know what he's talking about? We're shocked :roll:

What is on the cloud stays on the cloud until you pay for a download via itunes. This is not a cheap way of making your terabytes of free music legit... it's a cheaper way of getting at your music from Apple devices, assuming you're connected to the internet. For people that already stream a ton this would be nice, but high quality mp3 streaming would eat up good chunks of mobile data and drain your battery a good deal on 3G or wifi. Meh.

 

[Ns1]

So that's the catch: You don't actually own the music.

I'm not sure I see the point of this service. The only way I can see this being enticing is if you don't sync your devices often or you're too lazy to do so on a regular basis.

4 iDevices instantaneously syncing = massive win.

I just bought 400 CD's. Importing them...TO THE CLOUD (this fall lol)

 

[JS80]

4 iDevices instantaneously syncing = massive win.

I just bought 400 CD's. Importing them...TO THE CLOUD (this fall lol)

What's a "CD"? Like a bank CD?

 

[BeauJangles]

So that's the catch: You don't actually own the music.

I'm not sure I see the point of this service. The only way I can see this being enticing is if you don't sync your devices often or you're too lazy to do so on a regular basis.

Yeah, I agree.

The only music service I've been interested in paying for is Pandora. I don't see why I should pay more to access my own music, particularly when accessing it this way is unreliable (connections can drop) and power-consuming (constantly streaming versus playing off flash memory HAS to take more power).

If I was going to pay for any service, it would be Pandora. I actually listen to Pandora more than I open iTunes these days anyway.

 

[PokerGuy]

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.

 

[vi edit]

I'm not sure I see the point of this service. The only way I can see this being enticing is if you don't sync your devices often or you're too lazy to do so on a regular basis.

It's not just synch...it's an online backup and automated synch of virtually all data on your phone or tablet.

 

[Wyndru]

I wonder how they check versions of songs.
Do they simply check Artist, Album, Track info from the mp3 tag?

I was thinking the same thing. People will just be retagging their mp3's over and over if Apple isn't planning on verifying the actual audio in the song.

It would take too many people to check every song that people want to add.

 

[Ns1]

Yeah, I agree.

The only music service I've been interested in paying for is Pandora. I don't see why I should pay more to access my own music, particularly when accessing it this way is unreliable (connections can drop) and power-consuming (constantly streaming versus playing off flash memory HAS to take more power).

If I was going to pay for any service, it would be Pandora. I actually listen to Pandora more than I open iTunes these days anyway.

25/yr iTunes cloud < 3/mo Pandora One

 

[Ns1]

I was thinking the same thing. People will just be retagging some mp3's over and over if their not planning on verifying the actual audio in the song.

It would take too many people to check every song that people want to add.

uhm, use the SHAZAM engine and run all the songs through that. problem solved.

 

[BeauJangles]

It's not just synch...it's an online backup and automated synch of virtually all data on your phone or tablet.

The sync / backup service is free, with 5 gigs of storage. The match feature is what costs $25 which is silly, because Apple is asking you to pay for your music twice and how hard is it to connect your ipod to your computer?

 

[silverpig]

I wonder how they check versions of songs.
Do they simply check Artist, Album, Track info from the mp3 tag?

Oh man, I'm thinking of figuring out a bash script to find a list of all track listings from all music on the iTunes library and doing a touch command to create all the files. They'll be empty of course.

Next attempt is to take that list of empty files and put it through an mp3 auto-tagger to create valid ID3 tags.

I don't really want to use it to get music because I don't listen to much, but I'm kind of curious just to see if it can be done.

There may be some kind of hashing algorithm (although I find that hard to believe based on the wide variety of codecs, encoding settings, bitrates etc... too many hashes available for each song), or it could be some kind of shazam-like algorithm.

This might make pirating music even easier... just download the small hash file for an album and load it into iTunes match.

 

[Pardus]

Steve Jobs' master plan to draw a generation raised on stolen music into the iTunes store

Cloud or no cloud, this will be DRM copy protected music that will only work on apple devices. If Steve Jobs wants Apple to make more money, he should reduce the price of all mac hardware by 50&#37;.

I'll stick with keeping my mp3's on a hard drive instead of some floating cloud.

 

[Ns1]

The sync / backup service is free, with 5 gigs of storage. The match feature is what costs $25 which is silly, because Apple is asking you to pay for your music twice and how hard is it to connect your ipod to your computer?

It's a bitch when you got 4 libraries to manage. Also means anything more than 16gb of storage is a waste.


seriously though, iCloud just killed gMusic + Amazon cloud player.

 

[BeauJangles]

It's a bitch when you got 4 libraries to manage. Also means anything more than 16gb of storage is a waste.


seriously though, iCloud just killed gMusic + Amazon cloud player.

Yeah, I guess that's a fair point. I only have itunes / ipod so this is pretty worthless to me, but I can see if you actually listen to music on multiple computers / devices.

And, yeah, Amazon and gMusic are screwed. Their only saving grace is the freeness.

 

[Blackjack200]

Cloud or no cloud, this will be DRM copy protected music that will only work on apple devices. If Steve Jobs wants Apple to make more money, he should reduce the price of all mac hardware by 50%.
I'll stick with keeping my mp3's on a hard drive instead of some floating cloud.

I can't believe you just give this advice away for free. You should start a consulting firm or something.

 

[Patranus]

The sync / backup service is free, with 5 gigs of storage. The match feature is what costs $25 which is silly, because Apple is asking you to pay for your music twice and how hard is it to connect your ipod to your computer?

So it is silly for Amazon to charge to host your music that you didn't buy through Amazon?

 

[dainthomas]

Google Music Beta ftw. Since I got my invite and uploaded my library I haven't touched my ipod.

 

[gorcorps]

Yeah, I guess that's a fair point. I only have itunes / ipod so this is pretty worthless to me, but I can see if you actually listen to music on multiple computers / devices.

And, yeah, Amazon and gMusic are screwed. Their only saving grace is the freeness.

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.