Apple has finally rolled-out its iTunes Match service to the UK following 24 hours of confusion surrounding the much anticipated launch.
iTunes Match is a landmark moment for the music industry, as there has been nothing quite like it before, it looks to keep Apple users from using other Cloud services and it will also recoup money for labels who have suffered from piracy and unscrupulous CD ripping.
Essentially for £21.99 fee the app will scan your hard drive and replace your mp3’s for high quality iTunes versions – yes – it will even exchange mp3’s that you may got from less than legal means.
The service does have limits, though. You will be limited to matching 25,000 tracks a year – the service will then funnel some of the money from the subscriptions to the music labels, so they actually will recoup some of the money they’ve lost from piracy
iTunes Match works using the cloud and you’ll be granted 25,000 mp3’s to match a year. You will be able to access the service using iCloud – so should mean users will save a sizeable amount of hard drive space.
The service will also provide users with access to your entire music collection through the cloud on any iOS, Mac or Windows PC associated with their iTunes store account for up to 10 devices.
The match process will try and match tracks from your library with the vast catalogue Apple has with iTunes, if it finds a match it will swap with 256 kbps DRM-free versions for download. If it can’t find a match, it’ll upload your original file and make that available instead.
It must be said that Apple’s ability to get the service into the UK so soon after the US launch is impressive as the necessary licensing agreements are normally quite hard to get in place. Now, it’s just a matter of seeing if the launch goes smoothly. Let us know how it’s working for you in the comments.
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