Another interesting bit of news coming out of WWDC was iTunes Match, the famous “one last thing” Steve Jobs dropped at the end of his keynote.
Most of the coverage centers around creating amnesty for pirated music or monetizing it, depending on the perspective, all for $24.99 a year.
Why Copyright Holders Love iTunes Match And Pirates Hate It – Parmy Olson – Disruptors – Forbes
My first thought was what about tracks legitimately ripped off your own CDs? This could be a legally gray area, but if you’re only using these tracks for personal use and not sharing them, why would you need amnesty?
Essentially, this is as much a play to monetize further the stuff you already bought or drive people to repurchase their favorites from iTunes, as it is a way to answer pirated music.
It’s not clear whether this is an annual $24.99 for your library, or a one-time deal. Kind of a big difference.
And will your tracks have DRM on them after you pay, which seems probable to keep you from porting your stuff over to Amazon Cloud Player or Google Music.
Thoughts?
Update: Details trickling out, apparently Apple is retaining DRM on tracks bought before iTunes abandoned DRM two years ago. Not a huge surprise really. This reminded me of another point about non-DRM music. What happens to tracks bought from Amazon that have never had DRM? Will they be protected when you upload them to iCloud? Doubtful. Apple’s plan to placate the music industry and monetize “pirated” tracks may sweep up people with legally ripped copies of their CDs and those who’ve legally purchased music from non-DRM outlets.
This is going to be messy.
