Steve Jobs and the major-label record industry just reduced the price of music from 99 cents per song to 99 thousandths of a cent per song.
The new icloud service will take 25,000 of your songs that you pirated and store them in Apple’s new iCloud for $24.99 per year. What's the catch? Nothing, according to Tunecore’s Jeff Price. And you do not even have to upload them, it will simply match them for you.
... oh, and that includes a free upgrade from your low bit-rate mp3 to 256kbps. And did I mention you won’t have to store it? Nor remember where you put it? And have access to it all over the world?
No word on whether the record industry will be stepping up enforcement and prosecution against those who download illegally tomorrow, now that the "Fence Stolen Goods Here” sign has gone up on Apple’s shop window. But if I were the defense lawyer of such person, my defense would be “entrapment!”. (Update: One Day after record industry approves of counterfeits for the iCloud, industry rep says it is "stepping back from 3-strike cutoffs".)
I am sorry. I am being a little bit deceptive here. The price is 99 thousandths of a cent per year. I know that might be a deal-breaker for you.
99 thousandths of a cent! Just think of that, artists, next time you sit down to record another tune.
Update 6/7/2011: Confirming the obvious, an Apple spokeswoman said the company would not know if a person's songs were pirated, only if they matched songs in iTunes.
Update 6/7/2011: Confirming the obvious, an Apple spokeswoman said the company would not know if a person's songs were pirated, only if they matched songs in iTunes.
Getting paid on a song isn't automatic. People who love artist's music will gladly pay for it. Other people won't but artists don't worry about that because piracy was a pandora's box opened in the 90s. There are no easy solutions but at the very least Jobs has made it easier for consumers to enjoy their music anywhere they are.
ReplyDeleteI agree: "piracy was a pandora's box opened in the 90s". My friends in the data end of the securities industry say they saw it coming in the 80's, even, with the release of the CD. The record industry blindly went blindly ahead with the same retail model they used when selling vinyl records. After all, "an object's an object". But they never sold an object before that could be duplicated digit for digit. Instead, if they had asked for help from outside their industry, then registration, immobilization and verification could have been implemented up front. Better late than never. The job of the DCE is still to get the record industry to listen to folks from outside the entertainment industry. But they won't do it because they figure they can solve the problem on their own. Real question now, after they took this huge bribe from Apple to look the otehr way on piracy, whether they even *want* to solve he problem.
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