Earlier this year we talked a lot about copyright laws and pirates music. Publishers and labels have tried to stop illegal downloading of music because they feel they are losing out on a lot of money and view illegal downloading as a form of stealing. I do not agree with their views, but putting that aside, it seems that the publishers and labels have found a way to get some of their money back. The answer to their solution is iTunes Match.
In this article, the author speaks about his views on this new product. iTunes Match cost $25 a year and it allows you to store music not downloaded off the iTunes store in the iCloud. iTunes Match will also giv you a higher quality song if one is available. As one person on twitter mentioned, if you record a song on a radio, iTunes Match can match that song for you. But where is this money going? The rumors going around are that publishers will get 12% and labels will get 58% of all revenue generated by iTunes Match. The idea here is that if I go and download a new album for $20, and then get iTunes Match. 70% of that purchase is going to the label and publisher. So now,people who down illegal music and use iTunes Match are not getting music for free any more.
While it is not clear how big iTunes Match will be, I just downloaded it yesterday. I use it because 90% of library is either downloaded illegally or off CDs borrowed from friends. I now have access to 9000 songs on my iPhone and iPad. It will be interesting to see how this turns out in the future for people with libraries full of illegally downloaded music.
No comments:
Post a Comment