iTunes Match and the Music Labels

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Apple announced on Monday iCloud, Lion, and iOS5.  Oh , and one more thing: iTunes Match.  A 24.99$ a year service that lets you take your existing pira.... er, ripped music and get Apple to legitimize it.  The revolutionary part of this announcement has to do with the labels.  It's clear the music labels were involved in approving this plan, and it's also clear that a part of that yearly fee is going to the labels.  It's low enough people will pay it.  A lot of people.

But the big story is simply that the labels have found a way to profit from the pirates.  With a system like Apple in place, they can now track which songs are being stored and get a cut.  It's an amazing system, and whoever came up with the idea is pretty slick.  Of course, the flip side is they are also going to make money from people who already purchased the CD.  They don't mind, I'm sure.