# "iTunes Match Ends Piracy As We Know It" - A bold statement - Is it plausible? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 20, 2011, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521 "2011-11-20T04:57:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/1 "2011-11-20T04:57:18Z")
[iTunes Match Ends Piracy As We Know It](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2396424,00.asp) Will you deliver up your precious collection of illegal mp3s for “matching”? > [@](#): > > Apple’s iTunes 10.5.1 launched yesterday, and it includes the much-anticipated Match feature. Install the software and it will scan your hard drive for music and make high-quality, 256-Kbps AAC versions of every file available to you in the cloud. The kicker is that this includes not just songs you purchased through iTunes, but any music file on your system, no matter where or how you got it. It will cost $25 a year to maintain access to this newly rebuilt and legal library, but for that price you can have access to up to 25,000 songs. Apple will pay the labels a small fee for the rights, but all you pay is the $25 per year. For those of us in the MP3 generation, this is library liberation. ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/2 "2011-11-20T05:23:32Z")
Not even close, and I say that as a person who’s already bought in to the program for a year. The writer has a couple inaccuracies too. 1. No, iTunes won’t provide you an enhanced copy of every piece of music on your computer – it only works for songs that the iTunes store already has access to. For some folks, this might be most or all of what they have. For people who listen to more obscure stuff, have a lot of live bootlegs or things like that, probably not. (iTunes Match still uploads these and makes them available to all your devices, but it’s at whatever quality you originally uploaded them at) 2. No, you don’t have to exclude files of higher quality or iTunes will replace them. iTunes doesn’t do ANYTHING to your current library unless you tell it to. You let iTunes Match do its thing, and everything on your computer is exactly as it was before. The “upgrading” (or “downgrading”) only comes into play if you delete the original file from your hard drive – then you can re-download iTunes’ version. I think it’s a cool service – basically a backup in the cloud for all your music, plus the ability to download songs to any compatible device, plus the ability to upgrade lower-quality music. But I don’t think it’s a piracy-killer – you still have to buy (or acquire) the music from somewhere. And you have to pay the $25/year for the service (as long as you still want access to the music in the cloud – the upgraded tracks that you download you get to keep forever). And you have to use iTunes, which a lot of people aren’t fond of. I’d say Spotify’s more of a piracy-killer than iTunes Match. ---
**Author:** ![Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swords_to_Plowshares)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/3 "2011-11-20T05:45:51Z")
No, of course not. Google Music already does the same thing for free. ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/4 "2011-11-20T05:49:56Z")
> [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](#): > > No, of course not. Google Music already does the same thing for free. Google Music upgrades your music and makes the majority of it available to other devices without spending a ridiculous amount of time uploading it? And it doesn’t let you download music you didn’t buy through Google to another computer? This “same thing”…I don’t think it means what you think it means. ---
**Author:** ![Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swords_to_Plowshares)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/5 "2011-11-20T06:14:03Z")
> [@Garfield226](#): > > Google Music upgrades your music and makes the majority of it available to other devices without spending a ridiculous amount of time uploading it? > > And it doesn’t let you download music you didn’t buy through Google to another computer? > > This “same thing”…I don’t think it means what you think it means. You can upload your entire library to the cloud and play it on any computer or Android device. Yeah, I guess it takes a while to upload at first, but you can do it by running the uploader overnight a couple of times. ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/6 "2011-11-20T06:16:08Z")
> [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](#): > > You can upload your entire library to the cloud and play it on any computer or Android device. > > Yeah, I guess it takes a while to upload at first, but you can do it by running the uploader overnight a couple of times. I said “download,” not “play.” ---
**Author:** ![Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swords_to_Plowshares)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/7 "2011-11-20T06:24:03Z")
You’re being awfully defensive here. ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/8 "2011-11-20T06:36:11Z")
> [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](#): > > You’re being awfully defensive here. You made a claim that Google Music does the same thing that iTunes Match does. It doesn’t. I’m just pointing that out. (And also the “Google doesn’t let you download non-purchased music to other computers” was actually news to me when I checked to make sure it didn’t upgrade your music) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/9 "2011-11-20T06:44:19Z")
I’m not at all clear how this is supposed to end piracy-- If anything, it seems to me that it’d encourage it. Grab a low-quality copy from somewhere, anywhere, and presto, you now have a high-quality copy of your own, and which you can try to spread to other pirates. Or, of course, you could just ignore this entirely, and still keep on doing whatever you used to always do for your music (piracy, purchase elsewhere online, purchase on physical media, whatever). ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/10 "2011-11-20T07:58:14Z")
Is this really an offer of amnesty, or just Apple not ratting you out? And if it is, does the amnesty end when you stop using their service, and they’ve still got records of your 32GB collection of pirated music? > [@Chronos](#): > > I’m not at all clear how this is supposed to end piracy-- If anything, it seems to me that it’d encourage it. Grab a low-quality copy from somewhere, anywhere, and presto, you now have a high-quality copy of your own, and which you can try to spread to other pirates. Or maybe even just create a file that _looks_ like a low-quality copy to iTunes Match. If I create a blank file and call it “01 - \ - \.mp3”, can this program tell the difference? ---
**Author:** ![BeaMyra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/2bfe46/32.png) [@BeaMyra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeaMyra)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/11 "2011-11-20T08:00:46Z")
I don’t understand this. If you have a 128kbs mp3 you can convert it to 254kbs mp3 or mp4 but the quality doesn’t change. In fact every time you convert an mp3 or mp4 file to another format, you lose a bit of the quality You can use free tools like Foobar, Cue Tools or a great inexpensive DbPoweramp to convert to any format with a right click. Is it that if you have a low quality mp3 at 128kbs iTunes will REPLACE it with a higher quality version? Or will they simply convert it? Converting it does not do any good. ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/12 "2011-11-20T08:19:02Z")
Yes, as **Garfield226** , explained, if it’s something iTunes has available, they make a high-quality copy available. Otherwise, they use your copy. They aren’t actually converting your files, because that would just make things worse, as you point out. ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/13 "2011-11-20T08:21:23Z")
> [@BeaMyra](#): > > I don’t understand this. > > If you have a 128kbs mp3 you can convert it to 254kbs mp3 or mp4 but the quality doesn’t change. In fact every time you convert an mp3 or mp4 file to another format, you lose a bit of the quality > > You can use free tools like Foobar, Cue Tools or a great inexpensive DbPoweramp to convert to any format with a right click. > > Is it that if you have a low quality mp3 at 128kbs iTunes will REPLACE it with a higher quality version? Or will they simply convert it? Converting it does not do any good. They replace it with a higher quality version (and as I said above, only if you delete your current copy). That’s why it only works on music that they already have for sale and not super obscure stuff or bootlegs or whatever. Those they store at their current quality for you to redownload as you please, but they don’t get upgraded. ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/14 "2011-11-20T08:31:24Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Or maybe even just create a file that _looks_ like a low-quality copy to iTunes Match. If I create a blank file and call it “01 - \ - \.mp3”, can this program tell the difference? I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t work – they must have some way of verifying it. Otherwise it’d be pretty much all over the Internet by now: “$25 buys you any song you ever wanted!” Can’t find how they do it anyplace though. ---
**Author:** ![Pitchmeister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pitchmeister/32/3459_2.png) [@Pitchmeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pitchmeister)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/15 "2011-11-20T10:02:04Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Is this really an offer of amnesty, or just Apple not ratting you out? And if it is, does the amnesty end when you stop using their service, and they’ve still got records of your 32GB collection of pirated music? How do you think that would even work? There is no way to tell apart a file that is legitimately ripped from a CD you own and a file you downloaded from the internet. Also, do you know what this would do to Apple’s reputation? This is real. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/16 "2011-11-20T12:03:59Z")
> [@Garfield226](#): > > I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t work – they must have some way of verifying it. Otherwise it’d be pretty much all over the Internet by now: “$25 buys you any song you ever wanted!” Or it means that I was the first. Unlikely, I agree, but when you’re talking about verifying 10,000 files per person without being able to do a simple checksum (since that would only work if you know how it was encoded and how often), I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest corners _may_ have been cut. > [@Pitchmeister](#): > > How do you think that would even work? There is no way to tell apart a file that is legitimately ripped from a CD you own and a file you downloaded from the internet. For starters, the more different ways your collection has been encoded, the more likely it is that it was not all encoded by one person. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/17 "2011-11-20T17:33:28Z")
I’m sure that they have some way of fingerprinting the songs that’s a bit more sophisticated than checksumming. I mean, after all, you can recognize songs you know without analyzing the bits directly, right? Just off the top of my head, you could do something like this: Divide the song into segments a sixteenth of a second long Fourier analyze each of the segments (this is probably already how it’s encoded, anyway, in most formats) Make note of the strongest, or maybe two or three strongest, Fourier component in each segment Possibly divide all the frequencies by the first strong frequency, if you want to count versions of the song in different keys as the same Compare this sequence of frequencies to your database And that’s just off the top of my head, and I’m nowhere near a specialist in this-- The folks who design audio compression codecs would surely have a better idea of how to proceed. And of course, the process could be even more efficient if they use a template-matching algorithm: Guess the identity of the song from the filename (or maybe the top n possible identities of the song, if the filename is ambiguous), and then compare it to that song, and see how close it matches: That way you don’t need to go through the entire database. ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/18 "2011-11-20T22:57:00Z")
Why wouldn’t it just work the same way Shazam works? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/19 "2011-11-20T23:37:09Z")
I don’t know; how does Shazam work? Other than by giving you favorable attributes of an acrostic assortment of deities, that is. ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521/20 "2011-11-21T10:56:21Z")
you shout [SHAZAM!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shazam_(service)) and point your phone towards music and it’ll [identify](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_fingerprint) the song name, bring up the lyrics, link to the song on youtube, link to purchase it etc. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/itunes-match-ends-piracy-as-we-know-it-a-bold-statement-is-it-plausible/603521.md?page=2)