Why iTunes Match is a big step for content ownership

Remember a few years ago, when Apple first effectively created the online music market with iTunes, at the time later put the first, second and third nails in the coffin of stupid DRM on music files?

The basic idea is this

The basic idea is this. Assuming you already use iTunes, you can now pay Apple a subscription fee of £21 a year to store your music in the cloud. Spontaneously, that's no big deal. We've seen plenty of music lockers come, go, and be beaten into submission by paranoid companies and their expensive lawyers.

Music, video, books... the question of who owns what in our increasingly digital world is going to be one of the most contentious for the foreseeable future. Considering this, Music Match is an amazingly brave step - not for Apple to implement, nevertheless for the music industry to allow.

The right deals in place to pay lower royalties

With the right deals in place to pay lower royalties, it would be in Apple and Amazon's interest to do the same thing for books, since getting a customer into their ecosystems is worth far more than the chance that every new Kindle owner is going to fill up on their current library instead of looking for new things.

1. They only allowed it because Apple has become so powerful in digital music. No other company would've got the iTunes Match deal agreed.