I remember when I bought my BeoSound 5 the painful WEEKS of tedious work it took me to clean up my music library, correcting tags and replacing low resolution cover art. When I watched Steve Jobs' announcement last week about iCloud, the first thing that came to mind was how much pain and effort the new Musicmatch feature could have saved me. While the details remain unclear, it sounds as though for an annual fee of $24.99, iTunes will take all of our ripped (or otherwise obtained digital music) that wasn't purchased from the iTunes Music Store and replace it with the same songs from the iTunes Music Store, complete with all the same rights as purchased music: DRM-free and automatically upgraded to 256 kbps in instances where the quality existing in our library is less than 256 kbps. I'm thinking about how much easier this would have made things by saving me the time of finding better cover art and correcting tags. This will be something of interest to future BeoSound 5 owners.

Of course it will also automatically down grade your lossless music to 256kbs

As suggested... things are not clear yet -but I am not certain it will work that way.

I, of course, could be wrong as usual!

As I understand: the Music Match service is rather descriptive. It will match YOUR content on YOUR library with content from the iTunes master catalog and simply allow access to the catalog for downstreaming. I do not believe that there is any interaction with YOUR actual library other than to compile what is there.

The reality is that iCloud is not exactly a cloud in the original sense as intended by (e.g.) Google with YOUR content on THEIR servers.

Considering the reduction of required server space, this model in some regards may actually make more sense!

Interesting times regardless!

burantek:

simply allow access to the catalog for downstreaming.

my reading of the announcement was that for a new iDevice it will download the files it has matched so that you do not need to copy the files bewteen your iDevices.

similarly, if you buy an new tune on iDevice-2 there will be an automatic download to iDevice-1.

I believe I read somewhere that it will not overwrite superior quality recordings.

and if there is something it does not match, then it will upload your private copy for distribution amongst your personal iDevices.

for me the BIG downside for the moment is that it is a US-only offering (well maybe NA-only at this stage).

In the U.S. we already have access to some of the iCloud features. I've been playing around with it for the last week. It definitely is NOT a streaming service (at least not yet) but is rather a service to synchronize libraries by allowing downloads to iDevices or registered computers with iTunes. From within iTunes, there is a screen that shows all music you have ever purchased on iTunes. You can tick off the "all songs" box or individual boxes. You can also filter it to only show music that is not showing up on the iTunes library on your computer. In using this, I found quite a few tracks/albums that I had lost many years ago in a hard drive failure between backups. I had forgotten all about those tracks! With one simple click, I was able to have iCloud download all of those lost tracks to my computer. Steve Jobs made no mention of musicmatch only permitting streaming. In fact, he made it pretty clear that iCloud is for downloading and not streaming. Time will tell, though.

As far as BeoSound 5 goes, I started by re-ripping a few dozen of my favorite albums in lossless quality. After that, I found my time priorities to go elsewhere and have been content with the existing lower quality music for casual MOTS listening. Sadly, most of my music was ripped at 128 kbps or less. I find the improvement to 256 kbps to be very noticeable. I find the improvement from 256 kbps to lossless to be quite marginal. In fact, many blind tests have shown that most people cannot discern the difference. While having a fully-lossless library would be ideal, considering the time involved to re-rip my library compared to using musicmatch (if it indeed works that way), I find the latter to be a satisfactory solution for me, personally. Certainly, there are audiophiles who would disagree.

I seem to recall a thread long ago where a BeoWorlder was making the argument that, even though it's still lossless, a 256 kbps music file purchased on iTunes is still superior to a 256 kbps music file ripped off of a cd -- because of the master source that was used. 

elephant:

similarly, if you buy an new tune on iDevice-2 there will be an automatic download to iDevice-1.

Of course you are correct!

I have already used this feature... the song will indeed download to the mobile device.

That makes what I was trying to articulate not very clear!

The difference is that there is no interaction with YOUR master library as I understand it???

But, then why would it be a paid service???

I guess the answer is somewhere in the middle?

burantek:

elephant:

similarly, if you buy an new tune on iDevice-2 there will be an automatic download to iDevice-1.

Of course you are correct!

I have already used this feature... the song will indeed download to the mobile device.

That makes what I was trying to articulate not very clear!

The difference is that there is no interaction with YOUR master library as I understand it???

But, then why would it be a paid service???

I guess the answer is somewhere in the middle?

I believe the way it works is the iCloud "library" keeps track of all music purchased through the iTunes Music Store. Each computer or iDevice scans its local device library and compares that to the iCloud library. It then shows you what tracks are missing from the local library and gives you the ability to download whatever you chose to download from the iCloud library. On each device, there is an optional box to tick to automatically download any new purchases to that particular device.

The $24.99 service will only be required annually for the musicmatch feature. Since iCloud only downloads and doesn't stream, it doesn't seem to make sense that the musicmatch part of the library will not be able to be downloaded to any registered device or computer. Hopefully, the $24.99 annual fee won't be required to keep those replaced songs playable once they are downloaded. Such a "license" would seem to fall under a DRM. Steve Jobs said the musicmatch replaced music will be DRM-free. It seems like the $24.99 fee is an attractive way for music studios to recoup at least a tiny part of their losses from music piracy.