

iCloud cost pegged at $25 per year, all 4 major labels signed - ssclafani
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/06/icloud-rumored-to-cost-25-per-year-all-four-major-labels-signed.ars

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andymoe
I'm betting this "just" buys you the ability to sync all your music (and
pretty much everything else that can go on your iphone) to every device you
have over the air.

I'm already spending that 30 bucks on Pandora One and I'm not sure the added
burden of having to maintain and manage a music library is something I'm up
for anymore. I'd rather just stream some semi-random music in the background
and go see some good live shows.

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cageface
I'm in the same boat. I'm very happy with the unlimited streaming model of
rd.io (and Netflix) and not very interested in a service that makes it
slightly more convenient for me to move big media files around and pay $9 a
pop to "own" a digital copy of an album.

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foxhill
$25 a year is certainly in the ballpark of acceptable yearly subscription fee,
but i'm not convinced about the actual product here..

i don't think i'd see a use from it, in the same way mobile me hasn't been of
much interest.. but then again, i could say the same about a lot of apple
products, and they're fairly successful.

then again, i don't think i am (or most of HN demographic are) the target
here.

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unexpected
If the service is indeed $25 a year, and lets you listen to unlimited amounts
of music, than this is a gamebreaker and would stop music piracy in its
tracks.

Think about it - this used to be the cost of a single CD! Netflix, by
comparison, charges $108/year for its offering.

More details about what the $25/year gets you is needed before one can make a
definitive judgement.

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darthg0d
I think the $25 per year is for access to the cloud service. You'll still have
to buy your tracks.

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jsz0
On the surface $25/year seems too low to cover a music subscription service
but there are about 140 million iOS devices out there and probably 50 million
Macs? If 50% of them were to signup for iCloud and pay $25/year with 70% going
to the labels/publishers they would make about $1.7 billion dollars. The
entire digital music market was $2.2B in 2010. It's definitely in the ballpark
to replace existing iTunes music sales. Apple may have sold the
labels/publishers on the idea that a low cost service that gives people what
they really want, unlimited access to endless amounts of music, is viable if
it's priced low enough. It would probably turn a lot of career pirates into
paying customers.

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neworbit
You're probably mostly double counting, unless that's $25/year/device - mac
users generally have iOS devices and may well have multiple iOS gadgets
accumulated over the years. (There are a lot of iPhone users who don't use a
mac, but not the other way around.)

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chrischen
I'm not exactly sure I'd feel comfortable funneling a chunk of that $25 a year
to record labels for the right to store my music in the cloud... Also, I
stopped maintaining my own "library" of music months ago and have resorted to
basically YouTube + unlimited subscription music service.

Concept of "library" should be dead.

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dpcan
Is this $25 per year to stream music I already own to myself?

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ugh
We don’t know but it’s probable (and also in line with what one would pay for
Amazon’s service†, depending on how much music you can upload).

†You can get up to 20GB for free from Amazon but I think we all know that
Apple doesn’t do free. I expect a much more generous limit for those $25 and
maybe a trial period but no free service.

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drivebyacct2
What the hell exactly costs $25/year. I've been hearing that number for some
time, but no one seems to indicate what it's for.

I'm paying $25 a year for an online drive? That's unlimited? I'm impressed if
so.

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ugh
One plausible scenario is that you have to upload all your non-iTMS while your
iTMS music can be streamed right from the start. Well, that’s at least the
minimal required scenario to make this service attractive when compared to
Google’s and Amazon’s services. Apple gets extra points if you can immediately
stream all the music in your library – no matter its source – if it is also
available in the iTMS. (That would, by the way, also save them space and
bandwidth and make it possible for them to be pretty competitive.)

My guess is that it’s either unlimited or has a pretty high limit. Google’s
service is currently capped at 20,000 songs†, Amazon’s free service has space
merely for a few thousand songs (5GB or 20GB if you purchase an album from
Amazon MP3).

Paying $30/year (after buying an album and getting the 20GB bump) gets you
altogether 50GB of Amazon Cloud Drive space. That would be my minimum
expectation for Apple’s service, too. (I would still be disappointed. 50GB
still fit my current music library – but for how long?) A 20,000 song limit
(that’s about 160GB assuming 3:30 long 256kBit/s AAC files∆) would be more
reasonable and at least be much cheaper than Amazon’s service (if you go with
Amazon, 100GB cost you $80, 200GB cost you $180).

It’s also possible that those $25 include some or all services that are
currently part of MobileMe (iDisk, email, calendar and other syncing, …).

†It’s currently free and requires an invitation but might be no more after it
is out of beta. Comparisons with Google Music are at this point in time moot.

∆Apple wouldn’t actually need all that space and the associated bandwidth.
First of all, not all people have 160GB music collections. Also, all music
bought from the iTMS (and maybe all music available on the iTMS depending how
the service will work in the end) doesn’t have to be uploaded and only one
copy of it has to be saved. I have 20GB of music bought in the iTMS and 20GB
of ripped music, I would only need 20GB of space.

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kemayo
It's worth bearing in mind that Amazon's service has unlimited storage for
music you purchase from Amazon. Purchases there don't count against your space
allowance.

So for new music purchases Amazon is pretty tempting to me even if I intend to
move the files to one of the other services at some point. Lifetime re-
downloading is a nice perk.

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ugh
Ah, ok, that’s good to know. If that’s the case than I would be disappointed
about anything below 50GB for my non-iTMS music and would very much expect no
limit on iTMS music and maybe a 20,000 or so limit for non-iTMS music.

