For record labels and musicians, there's another upside: because Apple will be able to track how many times each song in iTunes is streamed on a user's device, musicians and songwriters could be paid royalties. The benefit of the matching for users, as Apple sees it, is that iCloud won't require them to upload songs to a locker, a process that could take hours or days depending on the number of songs uploaded. All of the songs stored on Apple's servers will be encoded at 256Kbps AAC files.) (Identical being a somewhat flimsy word here – the version of the song will be the same, but not necessarily the quality. Google announced a similar service - Music Beta - last month.Īs Laura Sydell explained on NPR this weekend, the big difference between iCloud and those two services is that Apple's cloud-based service won't just be what's known as a "locker." In those services, users upload their own files to off-site storage that can be accessed from multiple devices, where iCloud will scan a user's library and match her songs with identical versions stored on Apple's servers. Amazon's cloud drive, which allows users to store their own media, including movies and music, was introduced in March. Unlike the introduction of the iPod, which launched into a wide-open marketplace or iTunes, the first major digital music store, Apple is ever so slightly behind the curve when it comes to cloud-based streaming systems. Consumers and industry watchers have been waiting for Apple to introduce a cloud-based service for streaming music for months, which put the company in an unusual position. It was a major announcement for the company. Purchased music, apps and books will not count toward the allotted storage. Subscribers to iCloud will have their E-books, photos and documents all backed up wirelessly and automatically. The service replaces Apple's previously available MobileMe service, which allowed users to store data and access email, calendar and contacts via a cloud. Songs that aren't included in the store will have to be uploaded from users' hard drives.Ī note on Apple's web page indicates that 5GB of storage will be offered to iCloud users for free. Though iCloud itself will be free, to fully take advantage of the service, users will need to pay $24.99 per year for a service called iTunes Match that will scan their iTunes library and make their songs available to be streamed on any Apple device, as long as those songs happen to among the 18 million available from Apples iTunes store. The service, which was introduced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, will be available starting in the fall for users of Apple products who also upgrade to the company's latest operating system.
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