iCloud and iTunes Match: A Winning Formula for Apple?

After months of speculation, Steve Jobs finally unveiled Apple's new iCloud service yesterday, which will allow users to remotely back up their data and store their own music in the cloud.

The latest version of MobileMe is here, then, but it's undergone a lot of changes along the way, including a drop in price from $99 ... to almost nothing.

Rather than simply updating certain files in real time like MobileMe, iCloud offers over-the-air synchronisation of all of your data, all of the time.  In addition to calendars, contacts and e-mails, which could already be synchronised, everything you buy from iTunes will be immediately available on computers running OS X and iOS devices linked using the same Apple account.  In the same way, a photo taken using your iPhone or iPad camera will appear on all of your devices.

Unlimited Backup

iCloud Backup keeps a remote copy of all the content from your iPhone, iPod or iPad, with settings, apps and downloads all saved every day using an incremental backup.

The Backup system is joined by Storage, which offers each account 5 GB of space to save files, on top of the space used for apps, iTunes downloads and photos.  If you fill that up too quickly, you will be able to buy yet more storage space.

The real news: iTunes in the cloud

But none of this is really all that exciting.  The big news is that as well as bringing together all the music bought by one person using a different device (and about time too!), Apple will also offer users the chance to save their own music in the cloud for $25—whether they bought it from iTunes or not.


iTunes Match uses tools developed by Lala.com, which Apple bought last year.  It scans your iTunes library, and lists which of the tracks you already own are on Apple's servers—which currently include a catalogue of 18 million tracks.  All of the matches are then available on all of your devices in 256 kbps AAC format.  If your files aren't recognised, you can upload them to Apple's servers yourself, again without eating into your 5 GB of storage.  It's not yet clear whether you'll then be able to stream them (which will pose a problem for iPod and iPad WiFi users) or whether you will then be able to re-download the tracks manually.

What about music labels and mobile networks?

They're probably not going to be particularly happy about any of this.  3G networks are already bursting at the seams, so mobile operators are likely to complain about the huge amounts of data uploaded and downloaded to mobile devices that this will encourage.  The traditional monthly 'fair use' limit of 500 MB on unlimited data won't last very long if you're moving your entire iTunes library around ...

The major record labels, are also having to accept some unpleasant news.  After successfully convincing Spotify and Deezer to cap the amount of free listening time available to non-subscribers, they're now having to face up to the fact that Apple will not differentiate based on the source of music.  That means there's nothing to stop users downloading their music from illegal file-sharing sites.  Better still, even the lowest-quality, highly compressed MP3 will be recognised by iTunes Match which will provide a much nicer 256 kbps version.  In other words, it's a way to replace illegal content with legal downloads: no wonder the record labels are pleased ...


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