Sounds like an amazing value for $25 with iTunes Match (replacing with higher quality recordings)

Apple has a way with ambiguity and false starts lately, such as announcing the end of MobileMe nearly two weeks before it had a document ready to explain the nuance (see “Apple Details Transition from MobileMe to iCloud,” 24 June 2011), and shipping Final Cut Pro X days before it had the answers published to obvious questions from professional customers.

The same is true with iTunes Match, a new subscription service that’s part of iTunes in the Cloud (see “iCloud Rolls In, Extended Forecast Calls for Disruption,” 6 June 2011). With iTunes Match, Apple said, you’ll be able to pay $25 a year to sync all the music you didn’t purchase from the iTunes Store through iCloud to your various computers and iOS devices. Instead of uploading 100 percent of your own music, however, Apple would use a variety of metadata and audio-matching algorithms to check whether a song you owned was the same as one in its 18-million item catalog.

What will happen after the match occurs has been rather confusing, and Apple provided mixed guidance. On its marketing Web site for iCloud, Apple continues to state:

All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality

We wondered if Apple was applying digital rights management (DRM) encryption to matched files, since what would otherwise stop someone from paying $25 for one year, matching all their songs, and walking away with higher quality files forever? This information has been available, though, in a place I should have looked: a press release that came out on 6 June 2011 but which I just found out about after Apple changed links to existing releases on the press relations portion of its Web site.

In the press release, Apple makes crystal clear what’s going to happen, something that was missed by many, thanks to the vast amount of news that came out that day. The relevant sentence:

In addition, music not purchased from iTunes can gain the same benefits by using iTunes Match, a service that replaces your music with a 256 kbps AAC DRM-free version if we can match it to the over 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, it makes the matched music available in minutes (instead of weeks to upload your entire music library), and uploads only the small percentage of unmatched music.

There you have it. You’ll be able to upgrade all your ripped files that aren’t up to snuff — avoiding replacing, say, your lossless FLAC versions — with the best Apple and the labels have to offer, for what is essentially a one-time $25 fee. This is the right way to do, but it seems like an awfully nice gift for those of us, like yours truly, who ripped their CDs at lower quality many years ago.

[Note: The first version of this story was written under the assumption that the press release wasn’t posted until 30 June 2011. It has been updated to reflect that the press release was moved to a new URL, which made it appear newly posted. -Glenn]

The ultimate Disney music mash-up [video]

What’s your favorite Disney tune? Hakuna Matata? Part of Your World? Whatever tune from the house of mouse makes you smile most, you will likely get your head grooving on with a mash-up of all the top songs.

Remix master Pogo took a single chord from classics like “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” and “Sleeping Beauty” and strung them together to create an oddly hypnotic ditty.

This is the video for my track ‘Bloom’, a patchwork of vocals and musical chords from various Disney films. I recorded the harp sample from ‘Sleeping Beauty’, and a series of chords from ‘A.I: Artificial Intelligence’ to form the base of the chorus. The vocals are sampled from Disney films, each of which are illustrated in this video.

 

Via HuffPo.

Valuable tip about iTunes (even before iCloud becomes available this Fall)

from: http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/

Beta. Available now.
Your past purchases. Available on all your devices.
Now you can download music you’ve previously purchased to all your
devices. When you buy music from iTunes, iCloud stores your purchase
history. So you can see the music you’ve bought — no matter which
device you bought it on. You can access your purchase history from the
iTunes Store on your Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. And since
you already own that music, you can tap to download your songs or
albums to any of your devices.

Coming This Fall
iTunes Match

If you want all the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud for music you
haven’t purchased from iTunes, iTunes Match is the perfect solution.
It lets you store your entire collection, including music you’ve
ripped from CDs or purchased somewhere other than iTunes. For just
$24.99 a year.2

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection
are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is
automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to
anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 18 million songs in
the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud.
All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much
faster than starting from scratch. And all the music iTunes matches
plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original
copy was of lower quality.

Hound, a music app for Apple mobiles, listed in top free apps of 2011, brings up info on musicians by your speaking their name

http://www.pcworld.com/article/228928/best_free_iphone_and_ipad_apps_of_2011_....mod_rel

Hound_best_free_iphone_and_ipad_apps_of_2011_so_far__pcworld

Hound allows you to speak the name of an artist, band, or a song tile and bring up a wealth of related information and photos, including tour dates, lyrics, and song previews. It's #7 of 22 apps in this "slideshow."

in the top 15 Apple mobile apps, Top 100 for the top albums and singles from around the world (just got it free)

http://www.pcworld.com/article/230129/top_15_iphone_and_ipad_apps_that_cost_9...

Top_100_top_15_iphone_and_ipad_apps_that_cost_99_cents__pcworld
Top 100 lists the top album and single charts from around the world. You can listen to any full songs from the listings, as well as watch the music videos. (It was listed on this site as $.99, but I just found it free in the iTunes Store. :-)

TuneIn Radio Pro, a universal app for iPad/iPhone, listed as one of 15 best apps for $.99

It's slide #4. 
In addition to the free version, TuneIn Radio Pro allows you to not only listen, but also record from around 40,000 radio stations, along with traditional AM/FM stations.