iTunes Match proving a success for music labels

A music executive has praised Apple and its iTunes Match service, believing it is offering up "magic money" to music copyright holders as they don't actually have to do anything to see this new source of income roll in.In a blog about iTunes Match, Jeff Price of site TuneCore – a service that offers budding musicians a way to sell their music through iTunes, Amazon MP3 and other digital distributors – explained that iTunes Match was offering up money to artists without any need for consumers to change their buying habits."Apple's iTunes Match monetises the existing behaviour of the consumer for copyright holders and artists. Consumers don't need to do anything new­ – they just need to listen to their pre-existing music," explained the blog."Apple charges consumers a fee of $25 a year to subscribe to the iTunes Match service. Each and every time the consumer either re-downloads or streams a song he or she already has, copyright holders get paid."Not a music amnesty.There's been a lot of talk about how Spotify and its business model is changing the music market but not giving too much back to the people that make the songs, so it is nice to see another business model is also working to pay artists their dues – even if the cash returned isn't much.But Price believes this isn't a problem: "Some may complain that it's not much money. Well, before you were getting zero, now you are getting something."Some people have talked about iTunes Match being an 'amnesty' for those who steal music. It's not. There is no 'amnesty' being granted to anyone by Apple or the record labels."The music industry needs innovation. Services like iTunes Match, Spotify, Simfy, Deezer and others are bringing that innovation – it will take some time to learn which are the ones consumers want."But in the interim, seeing an additional $10,000+ appear out of the thin air for TuneCore Artists by people just listening to songs they already own is amazing!"