Yesterday, Apple revealed details on its much-anticipated iCloud service. Turns out, you won’t be able to sync your white headphones to the cloud, but you will be able to sync photos, books, documents, apps, emails, calendars, and contacts, all available for download via “the cloud” from any iOS connected device like an iPhone, iPad, and iPod.
Music, however, is being handled a little differently. Rather than having your iTunes library appear magically on all your devices, it will simply be made “available” in the cloud. You’ll have access to your music, but you’ll have to re-download in order to listen to what you want, when you want. While this means no uploading and no USB cables, it also means you won’t be able to stream as many songs to your device as with Google’s and Amazon’s rival cloud services. In fact, you won’t be able to stream at all. And because only your purchased-through-iTunes music will be made available, it’s more like your ‘iTunes purchase history’ will be in the cloud to, you know, look at and re-download.
In addition to iCloud (which is free), you can purchase the much-touted iTunes Match for $24.99/year, which will essentially scan and then “match” 5,000 songs, whether purchased through the iTunes store or not, to Apple’s servers. The process is said to only take minutes. Pay another $25 and you can match 20,000 more songs. If Apple can’t match a song (which is probable since it only currently has licenses with the majors), then you have to individually upload the tracks as you would with Google Music and Amazon Cloud Drive. Without licenses from the independents, this could be as big of a pain as uploading to Google for us indie-oriented listeners (i.e., pretty much all of you reading this). And for those of you who are more into the Eureka! stuff? Haha, get the fuck outta here, LOSER.
Meanwhile, there are hardware considerations to take into account. iCloud only works on iOS 4.3.3 or higher, which means only certain devices will be included. New Verizon iPhone customers, for instance, are out of the iCloud. Also, iTunes Match’s requirement is iOS 5, which means that if you’ve got an old Apple device, you better start saving up for something that can handle the new OS or hope that your device will get an upgrade.
All this is to say that Apple is treating the cloud much differently than Google. Whereas Google wants the cloud to essentially be your computer, from which you’ll stream all your files from various web-connected devices, Apple is treating the cloud for storage, syncing, and downloading. Since Apple is so dependent on its various hardware for its success, this makes sense: concentrate the clouds over Apple Island and its denizens will be even more dependent. For the rest of you who use iTunes but not Apple’s hardware, the message is clear: if you like our software, buy our fairly new hardware for access to the iCloud and really new hardware for iTunes Match. Might cost some money, but hey, at least you’ll be able to sleep at night knowing that the major music groups are cool with your iCloud/iTunes Match listening habits.
In other news, I’m still trying to upload my music to also-not-that-impressive Google Music….
• Apple: http://www.apple.com
• Subsonic: http://www.subsonic.org