Amongst Apple’s announcements this week was an unveiling of the long rumored iCloud. And it looks to be a pretty massive multitiered synchronization and storage service, that’s scheduled for a full release this fall. iCloud’s evolved MobileMe elements, such as calendar and contact sync amongst ones various devices, don’t interest me the way Apple’s photo and music cumulus pipelines and locker do. Today, we’ll focus on the audio…
In addition to the obvious and long overdue ability to re-download purchased iTunes, onto any of your gear, iCloud will provide an online digital locker – unlike any other studio-blessed solution. “iTunes Match” lets you:
store your entire collection, including music you’ve ripped from CDs or purchased somewhere other than iTunes. For just $24.99 a year. iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.
Wild! Any matched track one has purchased from a competitor like Amazon, ripped, or even stolen will be upgraded and available for download on demand. I’d like to think the music industry has evolved, but it’s more likely large sums of cash nudged them beyond their probable discomfort. Regardless, I’m reconsidering the status of my mostly abandoned many gigabyte collection of ripped CDs (augmented by a healthy number of iTunes and Amazon MP3s). Without having to permanently dedicate local storage or figure out how to efficiently move these tunes around on demand, Apple’s $25 cloud locker seems like a great deal. In fact, I’m already imagining picking up a ton of used CDs to grow my library once again.
However, there is one catch. Depending upon your device predilection, it could be a deal breaker. Unlike competing cloud solutions, from the likes of Google and Amazon, that feature web-based audio players, Apple’s cloud solution is unsurprisingly tightly integrated with iTunes software. And streaming does not appear to be an option. Suggesting folks on non-Apple smartphones would require additional software and steps to copy their music onto their handsets. Additionally, there are still plenty of unanswered questions… What happens to your local and cloud tracks if you don’t renew and will playlist metadata also be synced?
