TuneCore president Jeff Price today wrote a blog post praising Apple's iTunes Match service for creating money "out of thin air" for copyright holders. iTunes Match launched with all the major record labels on board, but some small labels refused to participate over concerns the service was legitimizing music pirates.
Price disagrees:
A person has a song on her computer hard drive. She clicks on the song and plays it. No one is getting paid. The same person pays iTunes $25 for iMatch. She now clicks on the same song and plays it through her iMatch service. Copyright holders get paid.
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Price tells MacRumors that Apple keeps 30% of iTunes Match revenues for itself -- the same percentage the company keeps from the iTunes and App Stores. The remaining 70% is divided, with 88% going to record labels and 12% going to songwriters. The royalties are split amongst artists based on "how many times someone accesses your song" via iTunes Match and it doesn't matter if a song is matched or uploaded -- the royalty is paid either way.
Price and other record industry execs are thrilled with the iTunes Match service, and by extension, Apple. Not only are artists finally getting paid something for pirated music, but for legitimate song purchases they are getting paid twice. If a listener purchases a CD, rips it to their computer, and then uploads it to iTunes Match, the record company books revenue for both the purchase and the small cut they receive from iTunes Match.
Regarding other music services, Price says, Pandora or Spotify customers are "paying a fee to listen to Spotify's music collection." iTunes Match customers are "paying a fee to have access to [their] own music collection."
Top Rated Comments
I like the part about "industry execs are thrilled with the arrangement". They get 88% and the poor artist gets 12% OF COURSE they are thrilled with this.
1) The consumer gets a full backup of all of their music, a quality upgrade of the library, complete access to their full library at any time, and possibly legitimate copies of pirated music, all for ONLY $25 year (a great deal). Plus, this is a CHOICE - they are no worse off than they had been if they choose not to.
2) The music industry and artist make money not only on the initial sale, but also now on previously pirated music and more money on each iTunes Match play for both. Money they would have never gotten otherwise.
3) Apple gets good PR, at least enough money to cover there costs of running this (I assume), or if not, increased sales for devices that use iTuns Match assuming it's a selling point
Now, if only the iTunes Match service itself worked 100% correctly......;)
Tony
some people have 100s of GBs of music. that's impossible.
Tell the people who call the iPod touch the iTouch, while you're at it.... :grumble grumble: