No wonder Steve Jobs is smiling.
He just struck a deal with the record labels to finally monetize pirated music — a move that “resets the whole music industry,” according to one music-tech CEO.
The new scan-and-match feature in iTunes — called iTunes Match — will put a copy of most songs in users’ libraries in the cloud, where they will be available for streaming to any device for $25 a year.
It doesn’t matter where those songs came from — whether they were purchased on iTunes, ripped from a CD or downloaded from a file-sharing network.
“This puts together a model that allows people to make money off of pirated music,” Jeff Price, founder and CEO of independent music distributor TuneCore told Mashable.
The service will likely be launched on Monday — and from then on, most of the music in user’s iTunes libraries will be synced automatically with the 18 million tracks Apple has on file.
The annual subscription fee is a clever way to get people to finally pay for pirated music, albeit a fraction of what that music may have originally cost. Jobs didn’t detail the split, but Apple reportedly keeps 30% and gives the the labels ~60% and publishers ~10%.
“Napster trained people to download music and listen to it on their computers,” he says. “This new service will help people become more comfortable with the idea of streaming their music. And that’s what resets the whole music industry. Reeducating the consumers on how to listen to music.”
Jobs said the chances are “awfully good” that songs will find a match on Apple’s servers. Songs will be available as high-quality 256Kbps AAC audio files. The majority of music libraries aren’t uploaded, as they are to Google’s and Amazon’s services, which means the matching process takes minutes, Jobs said.
“The few songs that remain? Well, we’ll upload them,” Jobs said.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
120 responses to “How Steve Jobs Just Monetized Pirated Music [WWDC 2011 Reaction]”
….Or if you’re a tightwad like me, can I just suck up the week long upload and upload all of mine? Thereby avoiding the 24.00 a year?
“This new service will help people become more comfortable with the idea
of streaming their music. And that’s what resets the whole music
industry. Reeducating the consumers on how to listen to music.”
But it doesn’t. As far as I saw in the keynote, it only allows you to re-download those same songs to other devices. Nowhere was it mentioned that you could stream the music. And for me, that’s the dealbreaker. I’ll stick with Zumocast until Apple (or more likely the music industry) allows you to stream the music you already own.
It’s not monetizing piracy! It’s punishing those of us who don’t always use the Itunes store and actually buy cds or go through other services like amazons MP3 store. And considering the content matching skill of itunes now a lot of music wouldn’t be available.
That would cost even more look at the chart….
Nope. Anyway, the disk space would likely cost you more if you exceed your 5 GB allotment. $24.99 for this is a steal, IMO.
It really does not cost me anything to sync my music using a simple USB cable. And, I have thousands of songs.
For years now, I have very easily been able to sync that same music across all the ipods and computers that I own, all at no cost. I really do not see the benefit if I am willing to use a computer to sync across all my devices, oh and did I mention, at NO cost!
I guess it might be worth it to get “upgraded” 256Kbps AAC audio files into my library, but then discontinue the service thereafter.
Just buy a Pogoplug put all your music, photos and video on it and stream it to all your devices.
This service is terrible! How’s Apple going to find the countless unreleased demos from my favorite band, or the insane amount of b-sides and c-sides apple fails to add to iTunes. Fail, EPIC FAIL!
I think people fail to realize that iTunes Match will scan your library, upload the songs, and any that couldn’t be located in the iTunes Store you upload them yourself. This sets iCloud apart from Google and Amazon because you would have to do everything yourself and with Amazon it costs you more to keep a ton of songs in the cloud versus $25 for unlimited song storage, regardless of source.
You don’t upload your music collection. Anything you own is matched up with the copy already in the cloud. That higher quality version then becomes ‘yours’ and is synched up to your devices.
Here’s the one thing I’m curious about… being a music snob, I’ve tended to spend a ridiculously stupid amount of time categorizing my music – adding lyrics, special groupings, etc. I’m *assuming* that your metadata does go into the cloud, and that comes back to your device along with the track they have in their library, but I’m curious if that is true.
I’ve also tended to take two songs that flow one-after another, like Phish’s “Fluffhead” and “Fluff’s Travels” and made them one track (so they aren’t broken up during a shuffle). I’m guessing that would result in an uploaded track as it wouldn’t be in their library. But my track is apple lossless – does that mean they will down-
convert it?
How, exactly, are you being punished? It’s a cheaper price than anybody else’s service, and, um, you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to.
The music doesn’t count towards the 5 GB allotment.
kinda like money laundering, hehe
thats just the most boring thing you could’ve asked.
you need apple lossless to play music on your iphone? get real.
a steal? bandwidth costs, anyone?
Not really. My music is all full resolution not compressed 256k lossy files. So this would be a MAJOR downgrade in quality for a lot of people.
It was stated by El Jobso that any songs iTunes can’t match will be uploaded to the cloud for you.
No need to be so rude. Sheesh. I’m just saying that all my music is currently in Apple Lossless format. If you upload your own music when it is not in their library, what do they do with it? Obviously, they wouldn’t “up-convert” a 128kb song as that wouldn’t make it sound any better, but if you have it in a higher format, do they do anything to it?How about if the music is, say, 320kb MP3. Does that make you less “bored” with my comment?If not, then shut up. I didn’t say anything to insult you. Find something else to do, unless being a jerk is your actual profession.
You kinda don’t pay attention, do you? No streaming. Syncing. As an self-proclaimed author (and by extension, researcher), you should pay more attention.
Yeah, too bad LK ruined a really good topic with this. I thought this would be an insightful piece about how SJ made us all safe…
Shut up Joe, you little turd.
Ah, well, I sure feel put in my place.
twit
Go fuck yourself Greg. No one’s putting a gun to your head and making you use iTunes or iCloud. The punishment a whiny bitch like you deserves is to have your face planted into the nearest concrete sidewalk.
This little thread makes me laugh
Wow. I think someone needs a therapeutic psychologist …
Nowhere in the keynote, or in Apples info, do they say that iTunes Match lets you download the songs that’s been matched, it says that they are “played back”. The matched songs are most likely streamed from the iCloud servers.
LOL, keep it calm people
Its obvious that not only will Apple match your music up in the iCloud and stream it to your iDevices, but they will also insert subliminal gestures into the version they send back down to brainwash you into more consumerism. Listen carefully to the WWDC 2011 played backwards and you can hear “Buy Apple” quite clearly!!!
Steve jobs has actually done a good thing the music industry wants to be a big monopoly and over charge users so this way atleast things will get affordable
I’ll be turning this feature off since most of my music is 320kbps.
Yah, that’s what I thought it was?? I don’t remember hearing anything about streaming your music. I thought that it was 25/yr to sync your itunes library with the cloud so that it could then be sync’d, i.e. a local copy on all of your devices iDevice could be downloaded. I didn’t hear any mention about streaming capabilities.
5GB for 25$…
A 1TB USB disk costs 80$…
…except it won’t upload the songs. It just adds them from the Apple’s library. That’s why it takes minutes, not weeks.
Leave it to nerds to focus on tech specs and completely miss the user experience.
The point of this is that it’s automatic. No user intervention is needed. The user doesn’t even have to think about it. It. Just. Works.
No, they said in the keynote (repeatedly) that the files are automatically moved to each of your devices. They’re not streaming because of the hit on peoples’ bandwidth caps.
I’m confused, based on the debates in this thread, no one seems to be able to figure out how to use it – I though Apple-made things that were obvious in how to use them?
No, they don’t say that in the keynote actually, not regarding iTunes Match. Listen to Steve Jobs presenting iTunes Match as the one more thing in the keynote’s last five minutes, he doesn’t say anything about downloading the matched songs to your devices. Neither is there anything about downloading matched material to your devices in the info about iTunes Match on Apple’s site. In the parts regarding new and past iTunes purchases – yes, but in the part about iTunes Match – no. It says that it’s automatically “added to your iCloud library” (which I presume is in the cloud), and then can be listened to “anytime, on any device”.
I’m not saying that I know how this will work, ’cause I have no idea, but there are obvious discrepancies in how Apple presents iTunes Match compared to the other info about iTunes in the cloud. Maybe they haven’t decided themselves how it’s going to play out in detail yet? I mean, “this fall” can mean November as far as we know…
Youth nowadays. They need to be spoon-fed every last detail because they lack the critical thinking skills necessary to come to a conclusion on their own based on the available information.
iCloud is about allowing you to have all of your content on all of your devices.
“Your music automatically appears on your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC.”
http://www.apple.com/icloud/fe…
No, that’s not directly under the iTunes Match section of the page, but it doesn’t need to be. That point is made before you even get to the iTunes Match section.
If you’re coming into this with the assumption that it’s the way Amazon’s &/or Google’s services work, you’ll be just as confused as that Windows user is when they’re trying to find the Start Menu on a Mac.
uhm, amazon was first to market with this, and it drives more revenue back in to the music industry. How you can paint that as Jobs monetizing pirated music and not those that were first is beyond me… but then, this is CultOfMac. *rolleyes*
For those of us that aren’t pirates…. what if you own all the music you have in your library – and plenty of people do – what exactly are you paying for here? What’s the product? to be able to call on the library you own from anywhere? there are free products that allow that already. :)
Will Sony and big corporations ever allow it? Will the various governments, with all the politics and pressure from every single big music corporation allow Apple to to this just because “its just apple”?
If it ever happens, I REALLY would believe that Steve Jobs has a “reality distortion field”…
Wrong. Gabby, you do not upload songs that are already in the iTunes store, that’s the whole point. Apple already has them on their servers so there’s no need to upload them and waste space. When iCloud scans your iTunes library, it’s looking for all the tracks that are already on its servers and makes those available to you on all your devices so you do not need to purchase them again. The only tracks that are uploaded are the ones that are not already in the iTunes store. This is done automatically.
Your tracks would be uploaded. How bout you learn about a something you’re going to comment on dipshit. You are an epic fail.
You haven’t been paying attention. Apple’s iCloud service will not stream music to your device. You have to download the files to you device which sorta defeats the whole purpose of the Cloud if you ask me.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/…
That’s right. 5GB is fine for the data that’s getting stored there. Although if you need more for your mail etc you can upgrade the space just like MobileMe.
So, they are monetizing piracy- 60% of what, exactly? Are they saying 60% of all subscriptions go back to the artist/label, distributed evenly? Confused about how that works for major artists vs. smaller independent artists…
5gb free….
all your music in the cloud 25$…..
i think that the “it just works” part is going to drive a lot of the power users crazy
The nerd-class is not Apple’s target audience.
I know but Im talking in regards to most of the people that read sites like this, they use Apple products and yet they know what they’re doing
Did you not read the article dumb ass! 60% to the labels, that means the artist gets the same share they do from CD and other forms of sales.
Ummm I believe they got agreements from every major music corporation except one so far. And thats more than Amazon and Google could ever say!
I feel like either i’m a total idiot or a majority of people on here are completely retarded to what the iCloud is. Basically it scans the music you have in your library to the cloud, and uploads what songs you have that aren’t already part of the 18 million on there. Then with you appleID you can access you songs from anywhere using the cloud. That means if you have a mac at home and a mac at work, you can still access all your music there and you don’t have to transfer all your music to other computer. That is the idea of a cloud. Its not just being able to have it on all your devices. Its being able to access your own personal library ANYWHERE there is a device that supports the iCloud. I don’t get why this is such a hard concept to grasp. You pay $25 a YEAR to be able to access your music anywhere you want basically. And its monetizing stollen music because 60% of the profits go to the label (that means the artists as well) and 10% to the publisher. And the difference between Amazon and Google is that its cheaper, and Apple has already signed contracts with every major music company except one. (forgive me for not remembering which one), but Amazon has few and Google launched theirs with none.
your a fag
Hi Tony,
I’m not a dumb ass. I’m just a regular person who is confused by how this works, being an artist who is not on a label, and how they sort the difference in when the music is stolen vs. paid, etc… Clearly, you understand this better, but that doesn’t give you the right to be mean. There’s no need to take other people’s confusion so personally.
I wonder if you can fake an mp3 (file name, ID3 tags, other metadata), have it “sync” into iCloud as a track that Apple already has… and then download the actual mp3… woot, free music.
Me too. Though I think Joe has a point. No need to bash him because of your own disinterest.