Apple’s iTunes Match (aka iMatch): The First Royalties Are In

Does the artist get both sets of royalties?  Songwriter and the other normal kind?

Also i guess this is streaming.  How much do we get for a stream?  Do we get a cut of the $25 a year subscriptions people pay Apple for our music?

Awesome!!  Good to know..   i’m going to start catching up on the music side of the business very soon and will be reading these blogs regularly…  (here’s hoping i can hold onto this moment of inspiration and follow through lol..)

Apple pools all the money it receives from subscribers and takes 30%.  The other 70% stays in the royalty pot.

Then apple pro-rates out how much of that money is yours based on how many time someone access your song via iMatch

Of the money paid out, 12% is for the songwriter and 88% is for the entity that controls the recording

 Its called iTunes Match

@duncan

yes it is, but due to the confusion in the market, I went with a Title that lets people know its an Apple product
jeff

Good post.  How are the royalties capped? 

Also, the royalty pot is  $15.4 per user… back of the envelope math: I’ll assume there are 60MM iTunes US accounts of which about 25% will pay for iMatch.  Just pulling numbers here but ~$230MM in additional annual revenues to rights owners is interesting but not game changing if you consider it’s split across multiple record labels and prorated.

No question it’s a great move but not sure if it’s going to do much for rights owners.

@bigdeal

good points!

I dont know if its going to do a lot either, but its incremental income (no matter how small) and thats a good thing
It is publicly known that Apple’s margins for music sales are about 30%
if they sold iMatch for $25, and kept 30%, it leaves a base of $17.50

From the $17.50 – 12% for songwriters/publishers, 88% for the entity that controls the recording
than it gets pro-rated out

Month one generated about $1,000 for TuneCore artists
Month two generated about $9,000for TuneCore artists

jeff

And there’s your definition of why the press change/dumb-down everything they feel like.

could not agree with you more, but i have to work with what I got

jeff

If you’re familiar with “iTunes Match,” then “iMatch” is confusing. If you’re not, and you search for “iMatch” to learn more, you’ll be even more confused when you don’t find an Apple product called “iMatch”…

iTunes Match lets everyone know it’s an Apple product. If the layperson doesn’t associate iTunes with Apple – and worse, someone who would read this blog – they have a problem.

@anon
please feel free to provide a link in your blog posting

jeff

Sorry, I think this is just bizarre. You can’t just change the name of a product that isn’t yours! Would you want someone to call your product “CoreTunes” just because they thought it made more sense? Insane.

So a really popular oft played artist made maybe $10,000 x 0.7 x 0.12 x n where n is the percentage of times they were played out of all plays. So eliminating Madonna and those who don’t need the money — who could conceivably get 0.1% of all recordings played in a day, let’s say the people I play account for 0.000001 of all in the year’s plays (that’s generous probably).

So that’s 0.084 cents per year each.

You know what, I’d rather send one of my favourite artists a postcard and stick $25 inside. 

In order for it to be a meaningful system, the pool would need to increase one hundred thousand fold and most of my $25 would still be going to blockbuster artists I don’t care for.

Remember that in this kind of streaming, the user has actually purchased many/most of the songs, either on CD or digitally. So the $25/year is not for the music, but for the ability to stream the music from Apple’s data center in NC, e.g. to one’s phone. 

I think it’s stunning that Apple found a way to earn money, make money for content owners *and* create a best-of-breed service for users all in one fell swoop.

BigDeal is right in that it’s not a massive pot of money compared to other sources, but for some heavier users who are bound to have dubiously sourced music, this is a way for the artists to at least earn something back.

Let’s also consider side benefits: since I signed up for the service, buying music from iTunes has been more attractive: anything I buy is on all my devices instantly, and doesn’t count towards any artificial song number or total disk space limit.

@anon

seriously, this is what you are blogging here about. You’re right, Im wrong. Provide the link, may we move on now?
jeff

@wide Eyed Pupil

Not sure of your point. No one claims that two months into iMatch that artists are making millions off it.
Its a new income stream. Thats cool! thats a good thing! Will it shake out, who knows, but its new money coming in
Yeesh – give it some time. When CDs were first released barely anyone had a CD player and no one made money off them either
And if its just pennies (or fractions) so be it. But so the heck what?
jeff

just signed up on the strength of this article.

Just by signing up I get to support my favourite artists, and get better def too.

What’s not to like?

Top!

Confusion in the market? What confusion exactly?

It’s called iTunes Match.  Everyone knows that’s an Apple product, the ‘iTunes’ part is the give-away.

You’re *causing* confusion by inventing a completely different name for it.

WTF does that mean??? I think you should use the correct name of the product. There’s no excuse for not doing so.

WTF does that mean??? I think you should use the correct name of the product. There’s no excuse for not doing so.

WTF does that mean??? I think you should use the correct name of the product. There’s no excuse for not doing so.

Do you think only $10,000 was paid to the entire music industry?
$10,000 was what tune core were paid alone

Do you think only $10,000 was paid to the entire music industry?
$10,000 was what tune core were paid alone

Do you think only $10,000 was paid to the entire music industry?
$10,000 was what tune core were paid alone

A link to what??? You keep asking for a link for something that nobody is talking about. The name is iTunes Match. You can go to Apple.com to see that. There is no debate to be had about this. There is no product called iMatch, so the only “confusion” is being created by your stubbornness.

Furthermore, these are comments, not blog posts.

A link to what??? You keep asking for a link for something that nobody is talking about. The name is iTunes Match. You can go to Apple.com to see that. There is no debate to be had about this. There is no product called iMatch, so the only “confusion” is being created by your stubbornness.

Furthermore, these are comments, not blog posts.

A link to what??? You keep asking for a link for something that nobody is talking about. The name is iTunes Match. You can go to Apple.com to see that. There is no debate to be had about this. There is no product called iMatch, so the only “confusion” is being created by your stubbornness.

Furthermore, these are comments, not blog posts.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/

http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/

yes, im evil and bad, and wrong and horrible and anything else you can think of
youre right

life as we know it is over

now can you please just post a link to where you want people to go and move on?
jeff

it appears my evil plot to confuse the world is out

jeff

What’s iMatch?? Sounds like a dating site trying to fake being an apple product.

I think you mean iTunes Match. Everybody knows it by that name, because thats’ what theyre paying money for it as. Your made up reasons of why iMatch is a better choice are irrelevant, unfounded & to be blunt… just plain stupid.

I was going to share this article, but then I saw your replies to comments and your rationalization for making up a shittier name for a product your apparently reviewing.

#hownottowriteanarticle101

Confusion:

If you search for “iMatch”, the first link is photools.com. 

You should call it iTunes Match, because that’s the service name.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/

true

about $1,000 in the first month
about $9,000 in the second month

jeff

whatever artists i have, that are on your label… are getting deleted from iTunes Match immediately, so I am not funding your idiotic ass hole behavior.

@jimd

you really have to chill out about this

the world is not ending – you can post a link to the Apple iTunes iMatch product here if you like
if not, and you do a google search for Apple iMatch it takes you here where it talks about it – http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/
this truly is a one way fight – you win, im wrong, youre right

jeff

No-one has called you those things, so there’s no need to act childish.

You have comments enabled on this site so it’s a fair assumption that you welcome the views and questions of others. That you read and response to them indicates that you want to interact with your readership. So when people do respond to an article, why not address the question they have raised rather than act sarcastic?

My comment simply asked what the confusion in the market” was (your words, not mine). “iMatch” is a confusing term, because there’s no such product as “iMatch”. So again, what’s the confusion in the market? 

PS I don’t know what you mean by “post a link to where you want people to go”.

Really?! iTunes Match wouldn’t be enough to let people know?

It’s funny that the music industry sells me a cd or mp3, then feels cheated that they don’t get a royalty payment every time that I listen to it.

It’s funny that the music industry sells me a cd or mp3, then feels cheated that they don’t get a royalty payment every time that I listen to it.

RE: “iMatch” vs. iTunes Match.

I cannot find a single person who isn’t related to me/employed by Apple who doesn’t call the iPod Touch the “iTouch”.

The money isn’t coming “out of thin air”, it’s coming out of my pocket. I love buying music… the first time I have to buy it, but it seems that once again I am being asked to re-purchase music I already own just to consume it a slightly different way.

I did it when I moved from vinyl/tape to CD because there was no other option—paying the same price as someone who had never bought the album for the privilege of moving music I had already bought from one medium to another. I managed to avoid paying again when I ripped that music from CD to mp3, despite every effort of the industry to find some way to put its hand in my pocket. 

Now, it seems that behind my back, if I’m using Apple’s service to move music I already own from one device to another, I’m again paying extra royalties.

Awesome. First Apple music product I actually like. Will sign up.

@ellizardo

im not certain what is left to say

you’re right, im wrong

please post a link that will direct people to the appropriate URL within Apples website so they will not be confused
(you can read the confusion in the market based on the media pick up when Apple first announced iMatch months ago. People/blogs/the media called it iCloud, assumed it was associated with Spotify, said it was iTunes etc. Based on this past media pick up, and the ensuing confusion in the articles, I made the judgement call to use the name of the parent company “Apple” and then just “iMatch” to eliminate the past confusion that people had. As an additional example, the Ars Technica article that just posted suggests that iMatch and Spotify are the same – they are not. The article states, “Without any details on how much individual musicians are taking home, however, it’s not clear whether iTunes Match pays better or worse than similar services.”
There is no other service like iMatch – its the only one of its kind

She compares it to Spotify which is very very different

Spotify is paying a fee to listen to Spotify’s music collection

iMatch is paying a fee to have access to your own music collection

Further, the exciting point here is the new income stream that has been created which is getting drummed out by the blog postings saying the name should have been iTunes iMatch as opposed to Apple’s iMatch service. Finally, the legal agreement I signed with Apple calls it iMatch, not iTunes iMatch)
jeff

You’re not being forced into this. You can still manually sync and transfer songs to all your devices from your iTunes library. What you are pay for here the service of being able to grab any file anytime you’re connected to the Internet. If it’s not worth it, don’t pay for it. 

This is like the ridiculous Apple iTouch.

It doesn’t exist. It’s called an iPod touch.

Funnily enough though, iTouch is a word that correctly capitalises and spells when you write it on the iPhone.

You’re paying for a completely optional service, which allows you to get any of your music onto any of your devices at any time in any place without having to hook it up to your computer. If that is worth $25 per year to you, you pay it. If it’s not, you skip it. 

If you do sign up for the service, some of your $25 will go to artists in the form of royalties. You are not paying anything additional above the $25.

You are not re-purchasing anything and nothing is happening behind your back.

There, it wasn’t so hard to respond like an adult was it?

Whilst some people certainly are confused about what exactly iTunes Match offers, how does renaming the service “iMatch” eliminate any of that confusion? I get your point: people are misunderstanding the service that iTunes Match provides; it’s not clear though how you intend to eradicate that confusion by inventing a made-up name.

As for the legal agreement you signed, that sounds like a much more understandable reason to call it “iMatch”. You could probably have avoided a lot of confused commenters if you had just said that in the first place.

It seems instead you’ve created a lot of… confusion.

PS the link you’re after is apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/

The real question is why are you being so stubborn? Why don’t you just correct the story? “iMatch” is wrong it should be corrected. At least add an update/note at the end with the correct name and link to the product. You admit you’re wrong, but are refusing to correct the problem. Telling folks commenting to post a link to fix your error is kind of absurd.

The real question is why are you being so stubborn? Why don’t you just correct the story? “iMatch” is wrong it should be corrected. At least add an update/note at the end with the correct name and link to the product. You admit you’re wrong, but are refusing to correct the problem. Telling folks commenting to post a link to fix your error is kind of absurd.

The real question is why are you being so stubborn? Why don’t you just correct the story? “iMatch” is wrong it should be corrected. At least add an update/note at the end with the correct name and link to the product. You admit you’re wrong, but are refusing to correct the problem. Telling folks commenting to post a link to fix your error is kind of absurd.

 Yes, we know we’re right and you’re wrong. That is quite plain to see. Nobody thinks you’re evil or bad, but they ARE beginning to think you’re a dumbass with these responses instead of just changing the text in your article to the proper name.

 Yes, we know we’re right and you’re wrong. That is quite plain to see. Nobody thinks you’re evil or bad, but they ARE beginning to think you’re a dumbass with these responses instead of just changing the text in your article to the proper name.

 Yes, we know we’re right and you’re wrong. That is quite plain to see. Nobody thinks you’re evil or bad, but they ARE beginning to think you’re a dumbass with these responses instead of just changing the text in your article to the proper name.

Jesus Christ people… he called it iMatch. He’s telling us something we didn’t know. I too know it’s iTunes Match, and I realized right away he had it wrong, but who gives a fuck??

It’s interesting that they have (also) found a way to generate revenue from music that has primarily been obtained via non-commercial, democratized distribution channels. I do however think that the growth potential for a service that is more or less trying to profit on existing music files to be limited. Future sales will be re-downloadable regardless, while streaming services overall offer far more.

Personally I find iTunes Match more of a hassle than my prior syncing system, primarily because it’s way too buggy.

The legal agreement that I signed with Apple calls the product iMatch

Honestly I really don’t think this is worth arguing about. Im more interested in exploring and discussing the new revenue streams for artists. Therefore I concede whatever point you would like to move into that other conversation.
If you continue to just want to post regarding the name, I’m afraid I have nothing left to say.
Thank You

Jeff Price
Http://www.TuneCore.com

good post and story. only question, is how many artists/labels does that $10k get split between? 500 artists at 20/each is one thing, but 100 artists at 100 each is better. good post.

The reason that people/blogs and the media called it iCloud is that Apple introduced a new service it called iCloud. Part of the iCloud service is iTunes Match. This isn’t rocket surgery, this is you refusing to change your blog entry to use the (consumer facing) name.

doesn’t using the product’s actual name do that?

I signed up earlier this month, and I absolutely love the convenience. Nearly all my music got matched, and the rest got uploaded within just a few hours.

The tracks that play back from Apple are higher quality than the ones I had before, which made me feel a bit bad…. However I’m absolutely delighted to hear that Apple is paying royalties for this service. I win, the artists win. Who would have thought?

Great story. Nice to see something positive come out of this. Sorry you’re finding out that most people who comment on the internet are assholes.

“The legal agreement that I signed with Apple calls the product iMatch”

Knowing what I know of Apple’s product naming and reference guidelines, this is the most unlikely thing I have ever heard.  They have guidelines about the proper way to pluralize the names of their products.

“Each and every time the consumer either re-downloads or streams a song he or she already has, copyright holders get paid.”

Is that the case for re-downloading? I don’t pay for iTunes Match, but I have taken advantage of the (new, gratefully-welcomed) ability to re-download previous iTunes purchases. If royalties are being paid in that case, where’s the money coming from?

Hey

I was on this Jcore blog and it mentioned how imatch let’s me stream music to my iPod phone, my itouch, my Mac Pro Laptop, my iTV, my iscreen and my doors PC

Shame it doesn’t work on the singsong supernova, gobbleTV and all those ripoff gobble humanoid phones

(see what I did there)

Thing is, if you’d just shortened it to Match instead of bastardising it no-one would have said a thing

And yes, it is very cool that I get to support my favourite artists while managing my music has become easier

Btw your comments system doesn’t seem to allow copy, paste or standard iOS text operations
(I had to retype a sentence because I misspelt a word at the beginning, but I dare say you won’t want to troubleshoot to see if other users have the same issue based on your reaction to these comments)

“rocket surgery”  really….

I read ‘iMatch’ and assumed it was a new Apple product dealing with matching music, I read the rest of the article, found out it was actually called iTunes Match, and no problems were had. Quit whining about it! I think iMatch sounds nicer as an article title anyways.

I read ‘iMatch’ and assumed it was a new Apple product dealing with matching music, I read the rest of the article, found out it was actually called iTunes Match, and no problems were had. Quit whining about it! I think iMatch sounds nicer as an article title anyways.

It’s nice that you honestly state that it’s ‘copyright holders get paid’ and not ‘artists get paid.’ 

It’s almost perverse though, in my opinion, that “the artists” (HAHA what a joke. LABELS.) get paid when they did none of the work that occurred between the time I first bought the song and when I stream it today. Think about it. If you paid a guy to follow you around in a car with your laptop and a cable to sync more music to your phone anytime you wanted, the car guy would get to keep 100% of what you paid him, right? He wouldn’t have to pay royalties for transporting your laptop with MP3s on it. Why does Apple have to pay just because they are transporting the files themselves instead of the laptop?

IP law is stupid.

It’s nice that Apple made a $10k payment, but if that’s for the whole recording industry, it’s a pretty trivial sum.  I don’t think the SOPA / PIPA crowd is going to be much appeased by $5k a month aggregate,  or even 100x that. 

iMatch sounds like a bad dating website. It’s iTunes Match, just let it go and correct your post.

then what’s your explanation? it’s not called iMatch. why use it?

still rockin the resentment and snark toward your own readers. interesting strategy.

came in on Daring Fireball (a precise writer), will not be returning in future.

brilliant example!

computer scientists. the sort of people who followed links to this post.

we’re kind of a precise sort.

and I think your name should be…Louis. such a pretty name.

Don’t narrow your scope to the US so quickly, because no-one else does. I’m in Ireland, and I’m also paying €25/year ($33USD) for Match.

To the article itself, I’m curious if this means my collection of bootlegs (concerts & such) are filtering  royalties back to their rightful owners.

no, we’re just tired of publisher making things up whenever they like.

it used to be called journalistic integrity — things like it and accuracy were what writers strived for. now they just think “Whatever I want” is good enough. sad.

[raises hand]

what is iMatch? can you please link to it?

Who doesn’t like found money? This is a good deal for all.

As someone who makes my living as a professional musician, $10,000 total for all TuneCore artists does not make me excited, it makes me depressed. As for “before you were getting zero, now you are getting something,” that’s like telling me to get jazzed when MTV asks to license my music for $1. It’s “something,” right? I suppose it is, but it’s also insulting.

If this is the tip of an exponential iceberg, color me cautiously excited. But if I had to guess, I’d say Spotify will be the only real game in town 5 years from now.

I don’t find it so amazing to keep having to pay over and over and over again for content. LP / 8-track tape / Cassette tape / CD / iTunes, how many times does someone have to buy an album of music? 

Presumably, if the entity who controls the recording is not the artist, then the artist will see a portion of the 88% pursuant to their recording deal with the owner of the sound recording (e.g., their label).

Depending on how that income is characterized in the contract, that could be a net 50/50 split or some other share. If the artist is the songwriter, they’ll get the 12% songwriter share money too.

So if a dollar comes in from these royalties, 30 cents goes to Apple.

Then the other 70 cents gets split as follows:

The digital distributor gets its cut. But since that varies, I will assume that cut is zero for the purposes of this discussion. But whatever that cut is, it will lower the numbers below accordingly.

So 70 cents gets split like this:

8.4 cents to the songwriter.
61.6 cents to the owner of the sound recording

If the artist owns the sound recording and wrote the song, the entire 70 cents goes to the artist.

If a label owns the sound recording and the deal specifies a net 50/50 split, then the artist would get half of the 61.6 cents after the label has recouped any deductible expenses (this amount would be governed by the contract).

So in the scenario above, if the artist is recouped, and the contract provided a net 50/50 split, the artist would receive 30.8 cents per dollar of iTunes Match income related to the sound recording.

If the artist wrote the song, had a contract with a label calling for a net 50/50 split, and was recouped, the artist would see 39.2 cents out of every dollar generated by iTunes Match.

Probably, when you account for the digital distributor fee, that number would get pushed down closer 24 cents for the sound recording and 6 cents for the song.

Thanks for this update. Its good – as an iTunes Match customer – to know that money is making its way to the copyright owners. $10,000 doesn’t sound like a tremendous amount, but iTunes Match has only been in operation for a few months, and I don’t know how many people have signed up for it. But obviously, if it – and services like it – become mainstream it will represent a hopefully significant revenue stream for artists and record companies alike.

Personally, I don’t feel like I’m “paying twice” for my music. I feel I’m paying for the convenience of having secure cloud storage for my extensive music collection. No more having to periodically backup my ~6000 song library to CD-ROMS; or worry about losing my painstakingly curated metadata (album art, playlists, genres, play counts, etc.) if – heaven forbid – my house burned down. Lastly, I’ve been listening to digital music since 2001, and a large number of the songs I ripped from CD collection were at an inferior (128kbs) bit-rate. The task of manually re-ripping several hundred CDs to bring sound quality up to current (256kbs) standard was so daunting that I’d probably have never gotten around to it. Those benefits – in and of themselves – justify the $25 annual cost. The fact that some of that money is going to pay the artists who create the music I love is simply an added bonus.

Yeah, good point that it’s the labels that get the royalties. I’m guessing that royalties are a part of this setup because the labels would have used stupid IP laws to kill iTunes Match if they weren’t getting paid. They’re basically just using their incumbent power to skim off the top, but I’m confident that they’ll go as extinct as any dinosaur before too long. New music distribution models like the ones listed in the post will make them entirely unnecessary.

It’s not called iMatch.
It’s not called MatchMyMusicCollectionWithFilesOnYourServer.
It’s called iTunes Match.

@8f8ff21a67437febebc70afd19364e95:disqus you’re mixing two things and missing the whole point. This is totally different than MTV licensing your music for $1. This is not money to *license* your music at all. Remember that people that are listening your music already paid you (hopefully) for it. So this is just extra free free money for you, on top of the license fees you already got – CD, vinyl, purchased mp3, etc.

Now the amount you get to /license/ your music to streaming services it’s a totally new discussion. But let’s now mix everything and blame iTunes Match for it.

The sense of entitlement of people on the web always amazes me. As if they didn’t have any other place to go… People, if you don’t like it, just move on. Or better yet, create your own blog to complain about other blogs that write iMatch.

Jeff: I actually liked it  Keep up the good work.

iMatch is the new name coined by TuneCore for iTunes Match for some reason.

I understand the differences between licensing fees and streaming royalties.

My point is that it strikes me as funny when I’m told to get excited about earning “something”—but essentially nothing—from a given revenue stream. I love Apple, but $10,000 in two months is a comically small number. I’d rather keep some pride and give my music away for free (which I do, in addition to selling it), than be told to sit still and be happy that someone is throwing pennies in my face.

It’s called iTunes Match

It is not called iMatch

It is not called iMatch

Well, consider for a minute that iTunes Match just launched and it doesn’t have much traction yet. If all goes well, in a year or two you might have potentially 10x more users (or more). That would represent $600,000/year in “free” money, just for TuneCore. Plus of course all the licensing rights for mp3s sold and streaming rights from Spotify et al. Not much, but more than pennies.

I’m not defending Apple nor saying that iTunes Match is the salvation of independent artists. It is not. But I’m glad at least part of the money is flowing to where it should go, rather than just sitting on Apple’s bottom line. Wish Google, Amazon and others were also working to find a sustainable model for everybody.

Which is exactly the problem with it – making money of thin air. The music labels will always try to find more ways to nickel and dime the consumer, and that’s not right. A consumer should be able to use the music he’s buying anywhere he wishes. He shouldn’t be forced to pay for every single use case of that music, whether he uses it on a laptop, phone, cloud, and so on.

Of course if you start charging for all of those, they will make more money (for a while) – but it’s just not right, and it’s why piracy will keep increasing, with or without Megaupload.

Oh look. The Gruber Army of Smug, Self Congratulatory Bullies(™) have arrived.

Fear the cheetos, Tunecore.

 well, iTouch is not as clunky as iPod Touch and everyone still gets it. I
 guess people obsessed with dating-sites could be confused by iMatch.

I signed for iTunes Match in Brazil, never heard of TuneCore before but I’ll look for it’s artists. Some people here seems to not know the difference between a small label and Sony or Universal. It’s a labor of love and courage having a small label this days and I’m happy to know the guilt money from iTunes Match (yes, Father, I downloaded. But now I’m free because I’m paying) is helping artists and people who cares about keeping the good music.
AND NOW FOR THE LINK EVERYBODY IS TALKING ABOUT:
http://www.imatch.com/

And all the record companies were so afraid of new technology!

I was seriously considering getting iTunes Match also as it will help me sort some issue I have with different computers having totally different songs on iTunes- Ican uploadfrom all of those different iTunes and it will delete my duplicates( I hope correctly as the display duplicates actually often makes mistakes particulalry with pieces I have recorded myself or opera)

But now I am having second thoughts- why am I paying royalties again on music I already own?
Or should I think of this as helping the music industry for the ‘convenience’ or being able to stream them, or more to the point the convenience to remove them from my MacBook air wih it’s tiny memory AND have access to ALL my music.

I would rather not have known they are using my membership fee for royalties somehow it feel duplicitous – I didn’t know that was what it was for.

hahaha brilliant response, what a bunch of crybabies we have here.

— “But now I am having second thoughts- why am I paying royalties again on music I already own?”

You don’t own the music, never have and never will. You own a license to listen to it.

— “ once again I am being asked to re-purchase music I already own”

You don’t own the music.

Jeff. IMatch is an image management tool for windows. And iMatch is a company offering Search and Contract Services. Using this name for an Apple product could cause real trouble.

You are not paying royalties on music you already own. iTunes Match is an Apple service that organizes your existing music collection and synchronizes it between all your hardware devices. That’s it.

jeff

iTunesMatch!

name changed

@david
first month was about $1,000
Second month was about $9,000

it was spread across about 55,000 TuneCore artists

Its not much at the moment – and who knows, it may not generate a lot or it may go through the roof. These are just the first two months of a new service. More importantly, its a brand new incomes stream that never existed before.
No matter what the amount, its new money for copyright holders.

jeff

@sometoast

re-downloads on tracks you purchased in iTunes do not generate additional royalties for copyright holders (and costs you nothing to re-download). Subscribing to iTunes Match an then re-accessing your songs triggers the royalty payments
jeff

@doug

For me, this is like when Obama was not wearing the little American Flag pin on his lapel and everyone made a huge deal out of it.
So he just put one on.

I honestly am not invested in fighting over the name, so I changed it to what you all are stating we should change it to.
The more important issue is the new income stream for copyright holders from a new service
Jeff

I did indeed re-rip everything I had (700 albums) recently, to Apple Lossless. It was indeed as much of a pain in the ass as you would expect.

the payment was just to TuneCore Artists, not the entire music industry
jeff

the payment was just to TuneCore Artists, not the entire music industry
jeff

@kibbles

For me, this is like when Obama was not wearing the little American Flag pin on his lapel and everyone made a huge deal out of it.
So he just put one on.

I honestly am not invested in fighting over the name, so I changed it to what you all are stating we should change it to.
The more important issue is the new income stream for copyright holders from a new service
If you dont care about this point, so be it.

Jeff

@shaun

Yes, your bootlegs etc are supposed to be generating royalties back to the copyright holders.
jeff

@karl

you are not re-paying for content. iTunes Match is a service that organizes/synchronizes your music and makes it available for all your hardware devices.
Jeff

@3dog

i think we need to see how this shakes out over time.

When CDs first came out, no one made money off them either (CD players were over $1,000 and few had them)
We have to see if consumers adopt the technology and service.

its only been two months of royalties – who knows what the royalties will be like two years from now
The exciting part is that its a new income streams

jeff

As the comments above are on a highly pedantic level (he did call the service by it’s proper name, he just came up with another on his own), let’s refine this line of thinking to meet that level.

You are paying for a service that makes all your music available for all your hardware devices (running some flavor of the iTunes ecosystem). But, ultimately, some of your annual fees will go toward licensing costs.

This is one of those first-world problems – a great service that could be useful for you (I have an 8G iPod Touch, but my music collection is considerably bigger, and I don’t want to take a lot of time loading that iPod up). However, knowing that you’re paying some amount of money to listen to it again in the form of a licensing fee leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Never mind that you’d pay the same if you listened to 5 songs through (i)Match (“oh snap!”), or 5K. Never mind that by doing so, you are helping those who created the art you love (RIAA et al not withstanding).

Rationality is something we hold in high esteem, but rarely practice (myself most definitely included). This is human nature, and that’s o.k. Don’t sign up if you don’t like it. But don’t write it off as strictly re-licensing, and don’t claim it’s strictly a cloud service. It’s both, and both in good measure.

JA

Just to confirm:

The $10,000 is what TuneCore gets, not what TuneCore artists get, right? So it’s not $10,000 being split 55,000 ways… It’s the left over amount (after TuneCore takes its huge cut) that is being split 55,000 ways.

TuneCore’s model is to give the artists all the money. It gets paid a simple flat fee for distribution
The $10,000 goes to all the artist. This is on top of all of the other money they make.
To date, TuneCore artists have sold 500 million songs and earned over a quarter billion dollars.
TuneCore takes no percentage of music sales

Thank You

Jeff Price
Http://www.TuneCore.com

 put another way: people who value accuracy. shame thats something to be looked down on these days.

I don’t think it’s that, I think it’s more about the fact that here is a revolutionary product that has generated a new income stream for artists and copyright holders in a transforming media sector.
But instead of discussing that, the conversation is revolving around something a lot less relevant.
No one is debating the value of accuracy, but if you are going to take the time to post on the blog, should you not be discussing the more salient topic?
I would very much like to get your opinion or thoughts on how iTunes match is impacting the emerging music industry, what it means to you, and what it means to artists.
Thank You

Jeff Price
Http://www.TuneCore.com

This comment thread is totally the best example of why the internet and comments suck.

 Anyone know how much of this money goes to labels, vs. how much Apple keeps? Is this 30% or 60% of the total?

And spread out over how many labels?  100?  1000?  Would work out to $100 a piece… or $10 a piece.

Nice work if you can get it.

 Once you look at the streaming revenues generated by Spotify… you will be even more depressed.

From the $25 Apple keeps 30%.

From what’s left it gets split between the songwriter and the entity that controls the recording of the song.
The songwriter gets 12% of the 70% and the entity that controls the recording gets 88% of the 70%
Thank You

Jeff Price
Http://www.TuneCore.com

How many artists does that include? In other words, what percentage of the $10k would a single artist see?

So….less than 25 cents each.

@chris

most likely less

jeff

it varies based on how many times the song was accessed

jeff

@thomas

TuneCore takes no percentage of artist sales revenue. the artists receive 100% of the revenue. TuneCore gets paid a simple flat fee for distribution.
To date, TuneCore artists have sold over half a billion songs and earned over a quarter billion dollars.
Same with iTunes Match revenue – we touch none of it, the artists get it all.
Jeff

 Trolls, you mean.

Paying musicians is a good thing.

I’m a little confused as to what the difference is between hitting play on a CD that I bought and hitting play when using iTunes Match. Does it come under some sort of broadcast royalties or streaming royalties? Just looking for some understanding. Or if you have a link to soem info on it I would love to read up.

to give folks an idea of what this actually looks like, we had about 1000 individual songs that were just paid by iTunes match and made appx .40cents for that 1K…translated to about .0004 cents per song. 

that wasn’t through tunecore, either. that was from another digital distributor.

@Ryan

when you hit “play” with iMatch it access the recording and song (underlying composition) from the Apple server.
This causes a “reproduction” of the song. Under copyright law, for there to be a “new” reproduction, there must be a license and payment made to both the entity that owns the recording of the song (like a record label) and the person that wrote the song.
There are two different copyrights at play here – a (c) and a (p)

this video might help explain it a bit more – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMvhjwwzcQg&feature=channel_video_title
but in a nutshell, what we have is a copyright law and technology running into one another. Apple found a way to bridge the gap
jeff

did the other company take a % of your money?

jeff

Thanks Jeff. Exactly what I was looking for.

@ryan

glad to help

If you want to dig further go to http://www.tunecore.com/copyright

jeff

yes, they took their normal distribution cut. looks like it worked out to be .000113 per song. or about 11 cents total. 

Are you sane? Yeah, i all thought artists in the whole pop recorded music industry earned royalties and performance rights that add up to $10,000. That doesn’t even pay for the APTA stationary, dude!

My point is I can’t see it helping the kinds of artist I like. Really big block-bluster artists might take something — if the pool gets much much much bigger — but that’s dependant on an opaque business model. I’m unconvinced at this stage and your article didn’t really sell it to me very well.

I’m not selling, I’m just reporting.

I am curious to see how it shakes out.

Thank You

Jeff Price
Http://www.TuneCore.com

Pedants.

Thoroughly impressed with your patience with all the redundant comments piling on, which made it more difficult to understand the business model and cash flow you are so willing to explain openly.

Bravo.

 rocket surgeons.

Jeff – An enlightening post. I bet most people didn’t know that this was happening. Most people would also probably feel shitty paying the labels, but good about paying the artists. I feel like I’m paying for a service from Apple, whatever they do with the money – as long as it is not abusing, oppressing or threatening people – is really up to them. That the artists are getting a cut shows that Apple are smart at solving problems (mainly set up by the labels) and that they love music.

Now turn off the comments on your blog.

once the song is downloaded, will the copyright holder get paid each time the song is played, not streamed?

the iTunes Match service lets you re-access your songs

if you re-access via re-downloading it, copyright holders get paid.

If you re-access it via an iCloud based stream, copyright holders get paid
Jeff

so, once the song has been re-downloaded, copyright holders do not get paid for plays made after that.

@onycha

Correct. Once re-downloaded, if played off your hardware devices hard drive or flash memory copyright holders do not get paid again. They only get paid on the re-download
However, if you are not re-downloading, and play the song, and it streams off the iCloud server, than the copyright gets paid for each stream
jeff

and. another question. i’ve been streaming my favorite Vivaldi album, and the first time I stream a track, it takes a couple seconds to load, and then you can watch the time bar get darker as it, evidently, retrieves the whole song. (quite like a youtube video loading up) It does this each time I stream a track for the FIRST time. The SECOND time and each consecutive time I go back to that song to stream it again, no ‘loading’ happens and the song plays instantly as if it were on my hardware, cached somewhere. My question is, are copyright holders getting paid for each stream? it seemed like iTunes Match had to pull the song from their server only once. Can you shed some light on this.

@onycha

We might be getting a bit out of my area of knowledge, but yes, I believe the situation you describe constitutes a stream and therefore would get the copyright holder paid
It sounds like its going into the Cache but not a “downloaded” file

Jeff

What prevents an artist from “streaming” their own track endlessly? Will they be paid for streaming their own content? 

@nitebrain

there is nothing that can stop them from doing that, however, I suspect in the terms of iTunes Match it is a prohibited behavior which, if detected, get the tracks pulled from being eligible
jeff

I can’t locate any info about ‘endless streaming of a song’ in their terms of service. I imagine the streaming payrate is so low it doesn’t really make a difference to them. if you’re getting around what spotify pays, half a cent per stream, then you can hope to bank 1 dime in an hour if the song is about 3 minutes long. that’s 2 dollars 40 cents per 24 hours. 72 bucks a month. 

Am I not entitled to a royalty for streaming my own creation? So, I guess it is okay for Apple to profit from illegally downloaded music, but they have the right to prevent a person from listening to their own song?

LOL Typical Apple hypocrisy. I mean, if this service is the new recommended method to listen to music, then how can they justify preventing an artist from using the service to listen to their favorite music, even if it is their own?

i think you’ve jumped to that conclusion. i haven’t found anything, anywhere in the TOS that says artist may not listen to their own music.

It’s a common term and most subscription services that if the subscription is abused in the manner you have described the subscriber gets terminated and the music potentially gets pulled out of the service.
For example with Rhapsody as well as Napster, before it recently close down, this provision was in the terms and conditions.
It’s not that you can’t listen to your own music, it’s that you can’t abuse the system.
Thank You

Jeff Price
Http://www.TuneCore.com

Okay, so now I decide that I really, really like my song…. and I put a PC in every room of my house so that I can really enjoy the amazing artistry on that track, and thoroughly use this service as it was intended…of course. Well, I have about 20 rooms in my house, and I want music everywhere, and I can get computers on ebay for $15 each…. so now I am up to $1440 a month.

Not a bad income.

…And a “song” is a song. So I can create random static and call it music. That means I can crank out a few albums a day. And my grandmother really, really, loves my music.. and she also likes to hear music in every room of her house too, as does my uncle and 7 other members of my family. Now I am up to $10,000 a month.

if you have 20 rooms in your house, you shouldn’t need to make money this way.

You are not thinking hard enough…. 4 bedrooms, 1 kitchen, 1 laundry room, 1 attic, 1 garage, 4 bathrooms, 1 dining room, 1 living room, 1 den, 1 breakfast nook, 1 large walk-in closet, 1 foyer, 1 covered sun room, 1 basement. 20 “rooms”. Actually, I forgot to add the front and back yards could use a few Rock-coustic outdoor speakers too. And we can’t forget the mobile devices for the cars, thats 2 more locations… and one for each of my children’s bikes and one for the fishing boat too.

Legal is legal. A song is a song. And paying royalties for streaming is ludicrous. Where does it stop? Should photographers be paid when people download their photos? Then why can’t granny get paid when I download her family album?

But hey, Apple is worth more than the GDP of Sweden because of their 30% turnpike philosophy. I’d like a little of that in my bank account too.

Hope it works out for you

Thanks Jeff….amazingly quick replies!

Lots of thoughts come to mind about this….

I would also say that Apple is abusing the copyright laws by arbitrarily determining how much royalties are paid to artists and copyright holders. It is almost like they are acting above the law, or acting AS the law.

Because the songwriter does not have a choice whether a user uploads their song to Apple’s servers. The law is very specific about royalty rates, so how can Apple override the rates mandated by congress?

What if a publisher has not licensed streaming on the song? It is not a compulsory license. And the publisher has ultimate right to create copies of the song. If a user uploads a track, isn’t that an unauthorized copy?

Is it not an abuse of the system when a hosting company makes nearly 3 times as much as the publisher and the songwriter combined from the act of a consumer listening to a song?

Apple has negotiated the rates to be paid directly with publishers and the record labels. As this is a new product and service there is no compulsory license or statutory rate
It was literally done on a one-to-one negotiation

If there is a recording of a song or the song itself being used in the match service that has not been cleared by Apple, that song can and or will be removed from the match service upon notification to Apple that it should not be there
Thank You

Jeff Price
Http://www.TuneCore.com

I love the idea of paying more for the songs I listen to the most, and less for the songs I never play.  This is brilliant.

It’s actually pretty likely that “iMatch” is used in legal documentation rather than “iTunes Match,” because legal documents are valued for clarity, and any two word titles or entities are frequently renamed in legal documents. That’s why in the beginning of contracts or agreements, you will frequently see something like “the X Y Z company will be henceforth referred to as first party.”

Remember, Apple’s guidelines for consumer facing information is TOTALLY different. Also, there is absolutely nothing here that is being referred to in plural. (?!!!)

But still, it is entirely incorrect for anyone (outside of a legal document) to refer to iTunes Match as iMatch. To do so creates confusion and dilution of a marketing term.

@Jeff:disqus Having no interest in Obama I am unaware of the incidentDid he publicly call out and argue with those who were trying to help maintain his integrity?He doesn’t seem like a jerk so I imagine he just put the pin on(Anyway, isn’t it more like him wearing the Mexican flag then refusing to change it due to confusion in the electorate over the difference between the two countries)

Back on topic – I’m happy to see you have corrected your article and I’m interested in some of the follow up, particularly the information about the number of artists
While the amounts are small at the moment I feel it would be valuable to update the article to include information about the number of artists benefitting and the ratio of their split and perhaps come back to give further updates as time progresses

This doesn’t mean you should happily continue to rip off tracks in the first place – I hope that’s clear to everyone

 Haha, put ” i ” in the name and people feel its all about them. ‘ i ‘ don’t care what its called as long as ‘ i ‘ get paid. Grow up people if you cant figure out iMatch = iTunes Match you shouldn’t be on the iNet doh! internet. Pathetic

Run that “Find & Replace” again, as you still (in paragraph eleven) refer to the service as “iMatch”.

i enjoyed the article…

i enjoyed the article…

i enjoyed the article…

i enjoyed the article…

This is B.S I dosn’t not accure like this claim you do not see your money from Tunecore .

We let Interscope powered by Tunecore distro our music and we still have not seen money and it has been over 4 months and the sales from each store reflect that OG3 is doing better then your big artist on Itunes that all you have to do it click on his album Hit Machine Mixtape. We feed up with this Company lies and are planning on Legal actions in the very near future.

@oggies

Im sorry you are not getting more music sales reported from the stores. I understand its frustrating.
However, for you to come to our blog and call us thieves is ridiculous.
How about a bet: you contact Apple directly, ask them to send you copies of your sales statements. If they contain the same information we reported to you, you record a public apology as well as post one here at the TuneCore site.
If the information is different we pay you double and post a public apology to you
Jeff

@oggies

Im sorry you are not getting more music sales reported from the stores. I understand its frustrating.
However, for you to come to our blog and call us thieves is ridiculous.
How about a bet: you contact Apple directly, ask them to send you copies of your sales statements. If they contain the same information we reported to you, you record a public apology as well as post one here at the TuneCore site.
If the information is different we pay you double and post a public apology to you
Jeff

I find that being precise in what you say doesn’t confuse as much, just like when people say iTouch, it not an iTouch, it is an iPod Touch.  But not to go into full throttle ragging, anyway the one thing people seem to think iTunes Match is, is a streaming service.  It is not, it doesn’t pay artist when you listen to their songs, you buy the song or obtain it in whatever way, then upload it to iTunes in the Cloud where the service exists.  Then you go on your iPod Touch and download the song file from the cloud to your device where is actually will exist.  It kind of streams at first when you are downloading it but it downloads none the less.

When you download one of the stored songs in Icloud to listen on your mobile does it count towards your monthly limit you have with your phone carrier???

Yes it is, thats why it has been updated and now it is called iTunes Match.

So, if I have a song distributed through Tunecore (or plan on having one distributed through Tunecore) is there an additional fee for this iTunes Match service that must be paid to Tunecore? (FYI: I am already part of the Tunecore Songwriter Service).

no additional fee at all. comes with the service

jeff

There is nothing called imatch, references 
With iTunes Match, all your music — even songs you’ve imported from CDs — can be stored in iCloud. So you can access your music from all your devices and listen to your entire library, wherever you are

Exactly and I like the way they are paying royalties even if a person has youtube or copied music on their computer matched by Itunes, you also get the higher quality of music. If they don’t have it they upload yours for you so you can listen to it on whichever device you prefer to. 

They tell you to backup your music library so you’ll  have it anyway 

I don’t know anyone that calls it the “itouch” we all call it our IPod.

Apple didn’t say it was to pay royalties with it’s the fee they charge for the service plainly put.