Apple’s iCloud music locker will not require users to laboriously upload all the music in their iTunes libraries, but will instead rely on “scan and match.”
We all know iCloud is coming at next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) — Apple itself pre-announced it.
And we already know that iCloud will:
- Stream songs from the cloud to Macs, PCs, iPhones, iPads, and maybe at some point cars.
- Apple and the labels will charge a monthly subscription fee.
- Songs will be matched with songs on user’s hard drives or iTunes libraries. If the sound quality of a song is poor, Apple will upgrade it with a higher-quality version.
One big question, however, is whether users will be forced to upload their music libraries to Apple’s servers.
Not according to The Wall Street Journal. Apple has reportedly struck deals with the major record labels to “scan and match” songs on users’ hard drives.
iTunes will scan users’ music libraries and make copies of the songs it finds available through the user’s Music Locker.
This is a lot easier than uploading a massive music library to the cloud, as both Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music require users to do.
It’s not clear, however, whether scan and match will be limited to songs purchased through iTunes, or will apply to music ripped from CDs, purchased from other sources, or pirated off the Net.
It’s also not clear whether the system will use tags and other metadata, or some kind of acoustic fingerprinting like Gracenote. It may be based in part on technology acquired when Apple bought Lala, a start-up company that allowed users to play music they already owned on the Web. However, LaLa’s “Music Mover” required users to upload their tunes to the cloud before they could be streamed. Apple closed LaLa in 2009 after the purchase.
Either way, Apple has signed up three of the four major record labels, according to the Journal, and is expected to finalize an agreement with Universal Music Group later this week.
Eliminating the laborious process of uploading music libraries to the cloud is a major coup for Apple, and will certainly cement iTunes’ lead as the number one digital music leader.
Can anyone else compete? Are Amazon and Google toast?
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.
